Bash script to set up a temporary SSH tunnel

Question

On Cygwin, I want a Bash script to:

1. Create an SSH tunnel to a remote server.
2. Do some work locally that uses the tunnel.
3. Then shut down the

Answer 1

I prefer to launch a new shell for separate tasks and I often use the following command combination:

  $ sudo bash; exit

or sometimes:

  $ : > sensitive-temporary-data.txt; bash; rm -f sensitive-temporary-data.txt; exit

These commands create a nested shell where I can do all my work; when I'm finished I hit CTRL-D and the parent shell cleans up and exits as well. You could easily throw bash; into your ssh tunnel script just before the kill part so that when you log out of the nested shell your tunnel will be closed:

#!/bin/bash
ssh -nNT ... &
PID=$!
bash
kill $PID