Code Sorcery Workshop

Thanks to the fine folks at TUAW, I’ve been alerted to an interesting start to a series at Apple Matters called Using SSH: Secure Tunnels for the Common Man. There’s a nice bit of explanation on the need for and the basic concepts behind SSH tunneling.

Of course I’d be remiss to not mention Meerkat, Code Sorcery Workshop’s next application, built specifically to address the need for easy and feature-rich management of SSH tunnels. Even for folks like me who know the Terminal commands for SSH and the concepts behind rather arcane uses such as dynamic forwarding as a SOCKS proxy, it’s very useful to have menu bar access, Growl integration, Bonjour capability, and other Mac-like features for a classic UNIX tool like SSH.

However, I think that even with a tool like Meerkat, it’s important to have some sort of forum or knowledge base for various uses of SSH, which is something that I hope to start when Meerkat launches. It’s tricky because part of an SSH tunnel is inherently personal (e.g., your account details), but the basic concept can be shared for other people — whether it’s tunneling to your home iTunes collection, accessing your colocated Mac server securely via screen sharing, or securely browsing the web while on guest networks.

Anyway, give the article a look. I look forward to the upcoming installments — SSH is a dark art to many and it’s good to shed some light on it!

I thought I’d take a moment to outline a sample use case for Meerkat, one that goes outside the normal scenarios that most people think of when (or if) they think of SSH tunneling. Since Meerkat supports app triggers and Bonjour, it goes above and beyond plain old SSH and can really be used in some innovative ways.

Suppose that you have a large iTunes music collection on your home Mac that you either don’t want or can’t fit on your work Mac or your laptop because of its size. If you enable iTunes sharing on this home Mac, as well as SSH (under System Preferences -> Sharing -> Remote Login), you can use Meerkat to connect to this music collection from any other Mac running Meerkat and iTunes.

Just setup a tunnel in Meerkat using an account with the IP address, username, and password of your home Mac.

Meerkat-based iTunes sharing (click for larger screenshot)

You would pick port 3689, since this is what iTunes uses for music sharing, and an arbitrary port on the local Mac (doesn’t matter what). It only takes a few seconds to setup a tunnel like this.

Because of the app trigger, whenever you start iTunes on the Mac running Meerkat, Meerkat will automatically connect to your home Mac securely and, because of Bonjour, your home iTunes collection will show up right in iTunes’ source list, just like a Mac on the local network. You just select the collection and stream the music, just like if your home Mac was with you at work or next to your laptop at the coffee shop. It couldn’t be easier!

Plus, Meerkat responds automatically to sleep and wake of your Mac as well as network change events such as outages or a change of location. Just set it and forget it!

After Meerkat is released, I hope to maintain a list of scenarios like these. If you have any further ideas, feel free to post them below, and if you’re interested in being considered for the upcoming private beta, just leave a comment!

Continuing in my set of blog posts previewing my upcoming application, Meerkat, I’d like to take a moment to show off another handy feature of this SSH tunneling utility.

I often find that when I’m setting up an SSH tunnel, even though I know my way around the tool pretty well, I have to consult the man page to figure out what flags to use and which direction to setup the hosts. It can get confusing.

That’s why in Meerkat, I’ve created a setup assistant which helps guide you through quickly setting up a tunnel. While you can use the normal interface, particularly when you’re editing an existing tunnel or are very used to the process, the setup assistant walks you through the basics quickly.

I’m hoping that this feature will help people more easily setup SSH tunnels with Meerkat. Stay tuned for more preview details soon!

I’m happy to announce that I’m very near the beta stages of my next application — introducing Meerkat! In this post, I’ll cover a couple of the major features of this new utility, but stay tuned for more info in future posts!

Meerkat is an SSH tunnel manager designed for the developer or systems administrator with the need for multiple tunnels and advanced, automated management.

Meerkat (click for larger screenshot)

Meerkat allows you to easily set up SSH accounts and associated tunnels and activate and deactivate them via the main window, the dock, or the status bar.

Meerkat dock menu

Meerkat integrates with Growl to notify you of background tunnel management.

Meerkat Growl notification

One of Meerkat’s signature features is application triggers. Meerkat can automatically bring up or tear down tunnels in response to applications that you launch and quit.

Meerkat application trigger (click for larger screenshot)

On top of this, Meerkat can optionally advertise your tunnel endpoints over the LAN via Bonjour, Mac OS X’s convenient networking protocol. A great, practical use of this is connecting to your home computer’s iTunes collection and having it show up in your local iTunes, no matter what kind of firewall you may be behind (providing it allows SSH, a secure, encrypted protocol).

Another use for Meerkat’s Bonjour feature is to securely provide access to a remote database server to a local office for development purposes. The possibilities are endless — Leopard’s Finder uses Bonjour to see VNC servers, Safari recognizes web servers on the LAN using Bonjour, and Terminal uses Bonjour to find SFTP servers. And you can define custom Bonjour protocols to meet your own needs.

Meerkat Bonjour customization

That’s all for the Meerkat preview for now! If you’d like to be considered for the Meerkat beta, just leave a comment below. (Unless you put it in the body of the comment, your email address is only viewable to me.)

Happy holidays everyone!