I have two things that I'm able to do separately but would like to combine into a single step so I can automate it with Ansible.
Host A is my own laptop that cannot directly access C
Host B is a server with internet access that can access C. It is running squid
Host C which has no internet access
I can manually SSH to B and set up a reverse tunnel when I SSH to C. This allows C to have internet access if I set up http_proxy and https_proxy in the environment.
I can also use Ansible to connect to Host C from Host A via the proxy Host B. However so far whenever I do this host C has no internet access as the reverse tunnel isn't set up.
So I'm able to get close to my goal of running Ansible jobs on C while enabling internet access with a reverse tunnel from B, but I can't combine these two steps. So far I have
ansible_ssh_common_args='-o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -o LogLevel=ERROR -o ProxyCommand="ssh -p 22 -W %h:%p -q admin#HOST_B"'
ansible_ssh_extra_args="-R 3129:localhost:3128"
This works to connect to C, but I cannot access the internet. I'm guessing the ansible_ssh_extra_args is run on my host machine, when really I want to be run from the proxy server B when connecting to B.
I've tried putting the -R 3129:localhost:3128 in a few different places but without success. If I manually connect to B and run the reverse proxy command before running the Ansible task (which tests pinging Google) it works as expected.
How can I tell Ansible to use a reverse tunnel from the proxy server when connecting to C?
According your description
This allows C to have internet access if I set up http_proxy and https_proxy in the environment.
I understand that (only) for tasks which will require internet access (annot. and which might be very few), you need probably just to set the remote environment via
- name: Update all packages
yum:
name: '*'
state: latest
environment:
http_proxy: http://localhost:3128
https_proxy: http://localhost:3128
Please consider that Ansible bases on Task execution. For each task a connection will be made and a small package for remote execution transferred.
Related
First off: I have read the answers to similar questions on SO, but none of them worked.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The answer below is still valid, but maybe jump to the end for an alternative.
The situation:
App with GUI is running in a docker container (CentOS 7.1) under Arch Linux. (machine A)
Machine A has a monitor connected to it.
I want to access this GUI via X11 forwarding on my Arch Linux client machine. (machine B)
What works:
GUI works locally on machine A (with /tmp/.X11-unix being mounted in the Docker container).
X11 forwarding of any app running outside of docker (X11 forwarding is set up and running properly for non-docker usage).
I can even switch the user while remotely logged in, copy the .Xauthority file to the other user and X11 forwarding works as well.
Some setup info:
Docker networking is 'bridged'.
Container can reach host (firewall is open).
DISPLAY variable is set in container (to host-ip-addr:10.0 because of TCP port 6010 where sshd is listening).
Packets to X forward port (6010) are reaching the host from the container (tcpdump checked).
What does not work:
X11 forwarding of the Docker app
Errors:
X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication.
xterm: Xt error: Can't open display: host-ip-addr:10.0
Things i tried:
starting client ssh with ssh -Y option on machine B
putting "X11ForwardTrusted yes" in ssh_config on machine B
xhost + (so allow any clients to connect) on machine B
putting Host * in ssh_config on machine B
putting X11UseLocalhost no in sshd_config on machine A (to allow non-localhost clients)
Adding the X auth token in the container with xauth add from the login user on machine A
Just copying over the .Xauthority file from a working user into the container
Making shure .Xauthority file has correct permissions and owner
How can i just disable all the X security stuff and get this working?
Or even better: How can i get it working with security?
Is there at least a way to enable extensive debugging to see where exactly the problem is?
Alternative: The first answer below shows how to effectively resolve this issue. However: I would recommend you to look into a different approach all together, namely VNC. I personally switched to a tigerVNC setup that replaces the X11 forwarding and have not looked back. The performance is just leagues above what X11 forwarding delivered for me. There might be some instances where you cannot use VNC for whatever reason, but i would try it first.
The general setup is now as follows:
-VNC server runs on machine A on the host (not inside a docker container).
-Now you just have to figure out how to get a GUI for inside a docker container (which is a much more trivial undertaking).
-If the docker container was started NOT from the VNC environment, the DISPLAY variable maybe needs ajdusting.
Thanks so much #Lazarus535
I found that for me adding the following to my docker command worked:
--volume="$HOME/.Xauthority:/root/.Xauthority:rw"
I found this trick here
EDIT:
As Lazarus pointed out correctly you also have to set the --net=host option to make this work.
Ok, here is the thing:
1) Log in to remote machine
2) Check which display was set with echo $DISPLAY
3) Run xauth list
4) Copy the line corresponding to your DISPLAY
5) Enter your docker container
6) xauth add <the line you copied>*
7) Set DISPLAY with export DISPLAY=<ip-to-host>:<no-of-display>
*so far so good right?
This was nothing new...however here is the twist:
The line printed by xauth list for the login user looks something like this (in my case):
<hostname-of-machine>/unix:<no-of-display> MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 <some number here>
Because i use the bridged docker setup, the X forwarding port is not listening locally, because the sshd is not running in the container. Change the line above to:
<ip-of-host>:<no-of-display> MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 <some number here>
In essence: Remove the /unix part.
<ip-of-host> is the IP address where the sshd is running.
Set the DISPLAY variable as above.
So the error was that the DISPLAY name in the environment variable was not the "same" as the entry in the xauth list / .Xauthority file and the client could therefor not authenticate properly.
I switched back to an untrusted X11 forwarding setting.
The X11UseLocalhost no setting in the sshd_config file however is important, because the incomming connection will come from a "different" machine (the docker container).
This works in any scenario.
Install xhost if you don't have it. Then, in bash,
export DISPLAY=:0.0
xhost +local:docker
After this run your docker run command (or whatever docker command you are running) with -e DISPLAY=$DISPLAY
It works usually via https://stackoverflow.com/a/61060528/429476
But if you are running docker with a different user than the one used for ssh -X into the server with; then copying the Xauthority only helped along with volume mapping the file.
Example - I sshed into the server with alex user.Then ran docker after su -root and got this error
X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication.
After copying the .XAuthoirty file and mapping it like https://stackoverflow.com/a/51209546/429476 made it work
cp /home/alex/.Xauthority .
docker run -it --network=host --env DISPLAY=$DISPLAY --privileged \
--volume="$HOME/.Xauthority:/root/.Xauthority:rw" \
-v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix --rm <dockerimage>
More details on wiring here https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/604284/121634
Some clarifying remarks. Host is A, local machine is B
Ive edited this post to note things that I think should work in theory but haven't been tested, vs things I know to work
Running docker non-interactively
If your docker is running not interactively and running sshd, you can use jumphosts or proxycommand and specify the x11 client to run. You should NOT volume share your Xauthority file with the container, and sharing -e DISPLAY likely has no effect on future ssh sessions
Since you essentially have two sshd servers, either of the following should work out of the box
if you have openssh-client greater than version 7.3, you can use the following command
ssh -X -J user-on-host#hostmachine,user-on-docker#dockercontainer xeyes
If your openssh client is older, the syntax is instead
(google says the -X is not needed in the proxy command, but I am suspicious)
ssh -X -o ProxyCommand="ssh -W %h:%p user-on-host#hostmachine" user-on-docker#dockermachine xeyes
Or ssh -X into host, then ssh -X into docker.
In either of the above cases, you should NOT share .Xauthority with the container
Running docker interactively from within the ssh session
The easiest way to get this done is to set --net=host and X11UseLocalhost yse.
If your docker is running sshd, you can open a second ssh -X session on your local machine and use the jumphost method as above.
If you start it in the ssh session, you can either -e DISPLAY=$DISPLAY or export it when you're in. You might have to export it if you attach to an exiting container where this line wasn't used.
Use these docker args for --net host and x11uselocalhost yes
ssh -X to host
-e DISPLAY=$DISPLAY
-v $HOME/.Xauthority:/home/same-as-dash-u-user/.Xauthority
-u user
What follows is explanation of how everything works and other approaches to try
About Xauthority
ssh -X/-Y set up a session key in the hosts Xauthority file, and then sets up a listen port on which it places an x11 proxy that uses the session key, and converts it to be compatible with the key on your local machine. By design, the .Xauthority keys will be different between your local machine and the host machine. If you use jumphosts/proxycommand the keys between the host and the container will yet again be different from each other. If you instead use ssh tunnels or direct X11 connection, you will have to share the host Xauthority with the container, in the case of sharing .Xauthority with the container, you can only have one active session per user, since new sessions will invalidate the previous ones by modifying the hosts .Xauthority such that it only works with that session's ssh x11 proxy
X11UserLocalhost no theory##
Even Though X11UseLocalhost no causes the x server to listen on the wildcard address, With --net host I could not redirect the container display to localhost:X.Y where x and why are from the host $DISPLAY
X11UseLocalhost yes is the easy way
If you choose X11UseLocalhost yes the DISPLAY variable on the host becomes localhost:X:Y, which causes the ssh x11 proxy to listen only on localhost port x.
If X11UseLocalhost is no, the DISPLAY variable on the host becomes the host's hostname:X:Y, which causes the xerver to listen on 0.0.0.0:6000+X and causes xclients to reach out over the network to the hostname specified.
this is theoretical, I don't yet have access to docker on a remote host to test this
But this is the easy way. We bypass that by redirecting the DISPLAY variable to always be localhost, and do docker port mapping to move the data from localhost:X+1.Y on the container, to localhost:X.Y on the host, where ssh is waiting to forward x traffic back to the local machine. The +1 makes us agnostic to running either --net=host or --net=bridge
setting up container ports requires specifying expose in the dockerfile and publishing the ports with the -p command.
Setting everything up manually without ssh -X
This works only with --net host. This approach works without xauth because we are directly piping to your unix domain socket on the local machine
ssh to host without -X
ssh -R6010:localhost:6010 user#host
start docker with -e DISPLAY=localhost:10.1 or export inside
in another terminal on local machine
socat -d -d TCP-LISTEN:6010,fork UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/.X11-unix/X0
In original terminal run xclients
if container is net --bridged and you can't use docker ports, enable sshd on the container and use the jumphosts method
I have used these instructions for Running Gui Apps with Docker to create images that allow me to launch GUI based applications.
It all works flawlessly when running Docker on the same machine, but it stops working when running it on a remote host.
Locally, I can run
docker --rm --ti -e DISPLAY -e <X tmp> <image_name> xclock
And I can get xclock running on my host machine.
When connecting remotely to a host with XForwarding, I am able to run X applications that show up on my local X Server, as anyone would expect.
However if in the remote host I try to run the above docker command, it fails to connect to the DISPLAY (usually localhost:10.0)
I think the problem is that the XForwarding is setup on the localhost interface of the remote host.
So the docker host has no way to connect to DISPLAY=localhost:10.0 because that localhost means the remote host, unreachable from docker itself.
Can anyone suggest an elegant way to solve this?
Regards
Alessandro
EDIT1:
One possible way I guess is to use socat to forward the remote /tmp/.X11-unix to the local machine. This way I would not need to use port forwarding.
It also looks like openssh 6.7 will natively support unix socket forwarding.
When running X applications through SSH (ssh -X), you are not using the /tmp/.X11-unix socket to communicate with the X server. You are rather using a tunnel through SSH reached via "localhost:10.0".
In order to get this to work, you need to make sure the SSH server supports X connections to the external address by setting
X11UseLocalhost no
in /etc/ssh/sshd_config.
Then $DISPLAY inside the container should be set to the IP address of the Docker host computer on the docker interface - typically 172.17.0.1. So $DISPLAY will then be 172.17.0.1:10
You need to add the X authentication token inside the docker container with "xauth add" (see here)
If there is any firewall on the Docker host computer, you will have to open up the TCP ports related to this tunnel. Typically you will have to run something like
ufw allow from 172.17.0.0/16 to any port $TCPPORT proto tcp
if you use ufw.
Then it should work. I hope it helps. See also my other answer here https://stackoverflow.com/a/48235281/5744809 for more details.
I have to provision a bunch of development vagrantboxes installed on different physical computers (OS X, Win, Ubuntu) with Ansible. As long as all ansible playbooks/roles/templates are unified (prod, dev) and stored in git, using ansible-pull and dealing with prod configs and vault that stores a real passwords is not an option. So the idea is to make every vagrantbox to create a reverse ssh tunnel to some server where ansible-playbook will be applied to a range of ports.
The question is: how to pick a free port from vagrantbox so I don't have to hardcode numbers to each VM created by developers?
Another question: is there any other, less complicated way to provision vagrant VMs working on different OS?
I found out that ssh automatically picks a free port if 0 is set as a port number. So running
ssh -N -f -R 0:localhost:22 user#middle-server
on my vagrant establishes a connection at the middle server where redirects localhost:port-picked to vagrant:22, and I can then apply ansible-playbook to a range of ports on middle server without copying playbooks to vagrant machines.
I have 3 Ubuntu machines. First one (A) is my local machine, second one (B) is a gateway to the third (C) Ubuntu server. I can SSH from my local machine, A, to B and then SSH from B to C. I can't SSH from A to C directly.
What I need is to remotely log (graphical) into C from B? and if possible from A? I'm no network guy and the tunneling concept and port 3389 is confusing me.
Appreciate your help.
Confusing or not, you need tunneling. The easiest:
ssh -L 7722:address.of.C:22 address.of.B
will log you into B. At the same time, it will set up a tunnel between the current machine's port 7722 (can be any unused port over 1024, I arbitrarily selected 7722) and C's port 22 (the ssh port). Then, in another terminal,
ssh -X -p 7722 localhost
will open a SSH connection to your local port 7722, which is being tunneled to C's 22. It is functionally equivalent to ssh address.of.C while the above tunnel exists.
When you are done, just exit the second connection to leave C, then exit the first connection to deconstruct the tunnel.
If you don't have two terminals to work with, it is a bit more complex since you need a way to refer to the tunnel in order to be able to close it later.
ssh -fNM -S /tmp/tunnel.B.to.C.control 7722:address.of.C:22 address.of.B
ssh -X -p 7722 localhost
ssh -O exit -S /tmp/tunnel.B.to.C.control address.of.B
Here, /tmp/tunnel.B.to.C.control is an arbitrary name of file in a location where you can create a file. The first command sets up a tunnel and exits (instead of logging in), but stays in memory and records its activities in the named file. The last command then releases the tunnel, the memory and the file.
I need to do some work on a server to which I don't have direct access to. I do have access to my company network (via vpn). If I were on that network, I could access the server directly. But, for some reason when I'm on the vpn, I can't access the server directly.
So, I need to ssh into an intermediary ubuntu box, and then create an ssh tunnel from that box to the server.
Then, I can do my work on my laptop and send it through a local tunnel that points to a foreign tunnel (on my ubuntu box) that goes to the server.
But I don't know how to do a tunnel that creates another tunnel to a third server.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Scott
What are you trying to achieve? If you just want to get to a shell on the server then ssh into the Ubuntu box and then ssh from there to the server.
If you want to access some other network resource on the server then you want to forward a port from the server (where you can't get to it) to the Ubuntu box (where you can). Take a look at the -L option in ssh.
Edit:
Copying files to the server:
tar c path/* | ssh ubuntuName 'ssh serverName "tar x"'
Copying stuff back:
ssh ubuntuName 'ssh serverName "tar c path/*"' | tar x
Obviously you need to change ubuntuName, serverName and path/* to what you want. To use rsync you need the -E option and the same trick of wrapping one ssh command inside another. After reading your comment I'd say that the most general answer to your question is that the trick is making ssh execute a command on the target machine. You do this by specifying the command as an argument after the machine name. If you use ssh as the target command for ssh to execute then you get the two-hop behaviour that you are looking for. Then it is just a matter of playing with quotes until everything is escaped correctly.
It's just a double port forward. Forward the ports from the PC to the ubuntu box, then on the ubuntu box forward those destination ports to the final endpoint. It's been a while since I've done command line ssh (been trapped in windows hell :)), so I can't give the command line you need. Another possibility is to use the SOCKS proxy ability built into SSH.
To connect from your local machine over a second machine to a specific port on the third machine you can use the ssh -N -L option:
ssh -N second_machine -L 8080:third_machine:8082
This maps the Port 8082 on the third machine to port 8080 on the local machine (eg. http://localhost:8080/ ).