I am working on a solution for remote administration of an very secure and isolated network. I had built a stripped down linux box that is remotely accessible through some very stringent access controls and then attached a serial cable from that box to a box on the secured network. With this solution I am able to connect to the external box and then connect to the box on the secured network via minicom and have basic command line access to the box on that network.

Right now I'm trying to kick it up a notch and find a solution so that I may access GUI tools on the box located on the secured network via the serial connection. I did a little digging but didn't come up with any luck.. I was thinking along the lines of finding a way to ssh through the serial connection and then tunnel X through the ssh connection. Is that possible? Any recommendations?

Thanks!

i think i just thought of a solution... dont know why this didnt hit me before. Perhaps just load an extra NIC in each of the PCs... connect them via ethernet and hardcode the NICs to be on the same private network. Wahlah.. ssh in business. Any thoughts?

Ethernet is probably the way to go but you could run ppp or slip over the serial link and achieve the same result restricted to RS232 speeds.

If the box on the secured network runs Linux too:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/PPP-HOWTO/direct.html
http://www.dbaoncall.net/references/ht_connect_2pc.html

If the box on the secured network runs Windows
http://www.google.com/search?q=direc...nnection+linux

Thanks for the links.. ima start digging through them in a sec. I realized a problem with the ethernet solution. If I am secure shelling to the external box from some remote site.. and then securing shelling from there to the internal box, I cant forward X over the ssh hop, or at least any way that I know of right off hand.

caught myself in a lie.. should be checkin more before typing


using the SSH -X tag for secure shell works just fine so long as you use that argument on both hops.

Remote Pc ----(ssh -X)----> External PC ------(ssh -X)----> internal PC
Works!

Remote Pc -----(ssh)------> External PC -------(ssh -X)------> internal PC
No good!

So long as you carry the -X argument through all your hops it looks like there is no problems forwarding GUI. I'm sure I could have read that somewhere but nothing beats an actually test.

Looks like I got this in the bag. Thanks!