TCP tunneling on containers - made easy

Description

Our images are super simple to use helpers for using tunneling on containers. For local Docker development or deploying a project to a Kubernetes cluster, this will come in hand if you need to access remote resources network protected behind an SSH authentication entry server, or simply set up a TCP proxy for exposing some private resource.

It's simple to use, you just need to provide the required environment variables for each use case. You can have this in your local project or deployed to a Kubernetes cluster very easily.

Important: the SSH tunnel image supports authentication using SSH keys only, password authentication is not supported at the moment.

Available tags

kooldev/tunnel:ssh

Image with AutoSSH helper to create SSH tunnels.

• kooldev/tunnel:ssh

kooldev/tunnel:proxy

Image with Haproxy TCP proxy setting, for just creating a simple TCP proxy.

• kooldev/tunnel:proxy

Usage

SSH tunnel

The basics to get a tunnel up and running on a Docker Compose or Kool project:

• Add a new service for the tunneling.
• Set up the SSH/target properly using the environment variables.
• Map to the container your SSH keys for authentication.

For example you can add to your docker-compose.yml a new service like this one:

  tunnel:
    image: "kooldev/tunnel"
    environment:
      # SSH defines the connection we should use to create the tunnel.
      TUNNEL_SSH_USER: "username"
      TUNNEL_SSH_HOST: "example.com"
      # The SSH port to connect to. The default is 22 so you only
      # need to specify in case you have a custom port.
      # TUNNEL_SSH_PORT: 2222

      # Target is the service you are trying to reach through the tunnel.
      # For example, let's access some Mysql server that is only visible
      # in the the local network
      TUNNEL_TARGET_HOST: 192.168.0.25 # replace this with your real target address
      TUNNEL_TARGET_PORT: 3306 # replace this with your real target port

      # The Listen is the port which the container should bind to.
      # This is the port you are going to use when accessing the
      # container in your other containers: "tunnel:3306"
      TUNNEL_LISTEN: 3306 # change to whatever port you want to use.
    volumes:
      # Share your SSH keys with the container for authentication
      - "$HOME/.ssh:/root/.ssh"

      # Optionally you can share one specific key only.
      # - "./path/to/some_private_key:/root/.ssh/id_rsa"

Note: You may wanna add the same network: to this service as well, in case you other services already specify some custom network.

Creating a single container

If you just want to start a tunnel and maybe bind it to your machine you can do:

docker run --rm \
    -v ~/.ssh:/root/.ssh \
    -e TUNNEL_SSH_PORT=22 \
    -e TUNNEL_SSH_USER=username \
    -e TUNNEL_SSH_HOST=example.com \
    -e TUNNEL_TARGET_HOST=192.168.0.25 \
    -e TUNNEL_TARGET_PORT=3306 \
    -e TUNNEL_LISTEN=13306 \
    -p 13306:13306 \
    kooldev/tunnel

Now with that container running, you can access localhost:13306 to reach the database behind the SSH tunnel.

Environment variables

The tunnels will work with just the setting of a few environment variables.

SSH Tunnel with kooldev/tunnel:ssh

Variable	Default value	Description
TUNNEL_SSH_USER	""	The user for SSH authentication.
TUNNEL_SSH_HOST	""	The host to connect with SSH to.
TUNNEL_SSH_PORT	"22"	The SSH port to use.
TUNNEL_TARGET_HOST	""	The host of the target. This is usually an internal network address that is only accessible from within the SSH tunnel server.
TUNNEL_TARGET_PORT	""	The port of the target.
TUNNEL_LISTEN	"10000"	The port to which the container should bind to. This is the port you are going to reach in the container to access the target host:post through the tunnel.

TCP proxy with kooldev/tunnel:proxy

Variable	Default value	Description
TUNNEL_TARGET_HOST	""	The host of the proxy target.
TUNNEL_TARGET_PORT	""	The port of the proxy target.
TUNNEL_LISTEN	"10000"	The port to which the container should bind to. This is the port you are going to reach in the container to access the target host:post through the tunnel.
TCP_PROXY_TIMEOUT_CONNECT	"10s"	Timeout for connection
TCP_PROXY_TIMEOUT_CLIENT	"30s"	Timeout for client write wait
TCP_PROXY_TIMEOUT_SERVER	"180s"	Timeout for server write wait
TCP_PROXY_MAXCONN	"50"	Maximum number of client connections

Note: the timeout and max conn variables above are passed to Haproxy configuration, so please refer to Haproxy docs for more details on those such settings.

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.