Even though it’s now the distant future, my university still insists on serving all web traffic through a single, archaic, annoying proxy server. So, when it explodes, like it has this evening, no-one on campus can surf the web. That includes the thousands of residents who live in university managed properties. There are no 24 hour technicians, so we will all have to wait until tomorrow until we can do any study that involves the internet (which is most of it, these days).

But! I’m posting this journal entry! Which means I can access the web. But how? The answer is not that I’m paying $0.002, nor even 0.002¢ per KB for mobile phone internet access. No; my saviour this evening is a combination of SDF public access unix system and SSH pretending to be a web proxy server.

I had tried this in the past but never got more than a blank screen when attempting to surf )-: I believe this problem to have been caused by a subtle mis-configuration in Firefox’s proxy settings dialogue, combined with some kind of spooky malware which my uni has installed on the workstations to prevent bypassing the proxy (or it could just be a bug).

So here’s how I’m currently connected using linux with openSSH:

1) ssh -D 7070 user@sverige.freeshell.org

The windows equivalent of this command is:

1) Run PuTTY. Enter sverige.freeshell.org (or whatever) into the server box, expand the SSH branch and click Tunnels. Enter any number (7070 will do) into the port box, select “Dynamic” and click the Add button. Open the connection, type your username and password.

2) Configure your browser to use a socks proxy server with the address 127.0.0.1 (which is your computer’s local loopback address) on port 7070 or whatever you chose in step 1.

3) Surf!

As I mentioned, I had tried this before but only ever got blank pages at stage 3. If you are having problems, check to make sure the “HTTP proxy” field in Firefox’s proxy setup is BLANK! I had previously been setting this to 127.0.0.1 and 7070 for the port. This breaks it – you only want the socks field filled in. Try choosing socks 4 if socks 5 doesn’t work.

Note also that only metaARPA members are allowed to forward ports on SDF. This is why I connected to the “sverige” server above, which is the SDF gentleman’s club lounge.

Finally, beware of oppressive workstation admins who have installed pesky firewalls or other nonsense to ruin your fun.

Note that this is also a handy way of encrypting your web traffic; but don’t go maxing out the connection or other SDF users will become upset.