Setting Up an SSH Tunnel for File Transfer

If you don't like either of the file transfer clients described in this site (SSH Secure File Transfer or Fugu), you can use Dreamweaver, or your favorite FTP client if you set up an SSH tunnel to connect securely.

An SSH tunnel creates a secure communication channel or tunnel from your PC or Mac to the remote server. You FTP client communicates with the SSH tunnel, which in turn encrypts your user name and password and forwards them to the remote server for authentication. There are two steps to transferring files through an SSH tunnel:

1. Establish the SSH Tunnel (described in this page)
2. Configure your FTP client to use the SSH tunnel (described in Client Configuration)

Note that this SSH tunneling method encrypts the username and password at login, but does not encrypt the files during transfer.

Windows

1. Launch the SSH Program.
2. Click the Quick Connect button to connect to your Web server. In the case of Web Central, the server is uts.cc.utexas.edu.
3. From the Edit menu choose Settings.
4. Under Profile Settings click Tunneling.
5. In the Tunneling Section click the Outgoing tab and then click Add.
6. Enter a descriptive name for this tunnel and choose FTP as the tunnel type.
7. Enter port 21 for the Listen and the Destination ports.
8. Click OK.
9. Close your SSH connection and when prompted say you want to save changes in the profile. You may need to quit the SSH application entirely to have your profile appear on the list of saved profiles.
   
10. To establish the tunnel, select the SSH profile you created above and login to UTS. You should then be able to use Dreamweaver or your preferred FTP client as long as you specify 127.0.0.1 as the host to connect to. Your FTP client will talk to the SSH tunnel that has been set up and your user name and password will be encrypted.

Please remember that this method does not encrypt data being transferred (in either direction) once you have authenticated. For example, if you need to transfer a file that has sensitive data in it you will need to use a secure transfer client described earlier (SSH Secure File Transfer or Fugu).

Macintosh

Conceptually, setting up an SSH tunnel on a Macintosh is the same as Windows, mechanically a different program and different configurations are used.

1. Launch Fugu.
2. From the SSH menu in Fugu select New SSH Tunnel.
3. Enter the fields as shown in the figure below. Use your UTS login name in the username field.
   
4. Click the Start tunnel button and enter your UTS password when prompted.
5. If you connect successfully, Fugu display a small window with a Close Tunnel button on it. Keep this window open while you are transferring files.

At this point you can use Dreamweaver, Fetch, or another FTP client to upload files to the Web server. You will need to configure your FTP client to work with the SSH tunnel that you have established.

Quitting

When you are finished transferring files, you should close both your FTP client and SSH or Fugu, whichever program you used to establish the tunnel.