I have used rc.local for years to setup an ssh reverse tunnel on boot under Debian up until Stretch. Now like many others I imagine, I’ve had to convert to systemd. I read everything I could about the choice for deprecating rc.local for systemd. I can say that systemd may be powerful, but systemd’s complexity entails a huge learning-curve for...
When using autossh to create a reverse tunnel, sometimes, mysteriously (for the moment), on the remote server, the connect is refused, returning this message in syslog/messages autossh[7451]: 127.0.0.1:{port}: Connection refused The problem is autossh process is running (pid 7451) but frozen ( thats the mystery ) The solution: sudo kill $(ps aux | grep ‘autossh’ | awk ‘{print $2}’)
As usual, most of the how-to guides out there are too brief (I’m guilty) or apply to other distros: This works on Linux Debian 7 all-around, and this is a complete how to. It works. You just have to follow a very long thread. No A.D.D. here! We will create a Persistent Reverse SSH Tunnel between 2 machines using autossh....