Re: Connecting through rlogin (ssh)

[Karl Kleinpaste <karl@jprc.com>]

I think this is a type of problem that should be solved outside Gnus,
because it's not a Gnus-specific sort of problem.  Fortunately, ssh
already provides exactly what you need:

ssh -q -f -x -L8080:real.news.server:119 your.login.host sleep 100000000

In this contrived example, the result is that connections to
"localhost" at port 8080 will be sent to "your.login.host," where you
have normal shell access, whereupon the server side of ssh will
forward the connection to "real.news.server" on port 119.

Add "-g" to make the forwarded port on your own system into a
promiscuous one, accessible by any other host.  By default, port
forwarding works on "localhost" only.  Beware of this becoming known
and accessible to outsiders, or you will become very...popular.

Once you've set up the forwarded port with ssh, then all you need in
your select method is:

	(nntp "localhost" (nntp-port-number 8080))

We use this at JPRC to support a suck-feed into our news server from
CMU CS.  (And I don't admit to which port or host have the promiscuous
port for the aforementioned "popularity" reason.)  That's why I think
this is a problem to be solved outside Gnus, because I need it both
for direct Gnus access to certain groups available at CMU CS, while
simultaneously wanting the identical capability for the sake of our
newsfeed.  One ssh invocation solves both problems.

--karl