X connection through router and firewall

Hello all,
I am having problem in establishing an X connection with my work
machine. Let me explain the situation in some more detail. All
machines are running linux.

My computer at work is behind a firewall. So, when I need to connect
to it I have to ssh to hostA (firewall), which upon successful
authorization, it connects me directly to hostB on my office network.
If -X option is used with ssh, hostB tries to set its DISPLAY variable
to hostA's display, which fails.

At home I am using a DSL connection with a router. My home machine
gets a static IP from the router. I have set my router to forward port
22 to my machine and ssh connection to my home machine works fine. If
I do ssh -X from my home machine to hostC ( which is on some other
network and not behind any firewall ), I can open any X client on
hostC successfully. Also I can open a sshed X connection on hostB from
hostC after proper xauthorization ( hostB and hostC are on different
network).

I tried to forward the display port on hostB to my home machine port
6000 using ssh -R option, but X server on my home machine is refusing
that connection ( my router is also forwarding port 6000 ). I have
added hostB's xauth magic key to my home machine's xauth list.

Any suggestions.

Thanks in advance.

[Followups set to COLN]

In comp.os.linux.networking Sourin <sourin@lycos.com> wrote:

> My computer at work is behind a firewall. So, when I need to connect
> to it I have to ssh to hostA (firewall), which upon successful
> authorization, it connects me directly to hostB on my office network.

So you've told it to run ssh in your .bash_profile or similar? Icky.

> If -X option is used with ssh, hostB tries to set its DISPLAY variable
> to hostA's display, which fails.

The display variable should be untouched, and when displayed, it should
be like localhost:10. Make sure you are net setting DISPLAY anywhere in
your login scripts.

From your home machine, try doing the following. You might like to have
a look at my sshmh program, which you can find on my website.

ssh -CAXt user@hostA ssh -AXt user@hostB

This is most easily done if you have SSH keys set up.

--
Cameron Kerr
cameron.kerr@paradise.net.nz : http://nzgeeks.org/cameron/
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