misc tidbits

So, when you are at a conference — and the hotel blocks port 25 — the best thing in the world, is that old standby — ssh port forwarding.

alias mailshell=’ssh -L 5525:mymailserver.edu:25 username@myserver-with-smtp-access-to-mymailserver.edu

And then configure my mail client to send to 127.0.0.1:5525

Or use Gmail — whatever floats your boat


Of course, you then might run into the fact that the hotel’s NAT seems to timeout your SSH sessions something awful. That’s when adding:

Host * ServerAliveInterval 120

to your .ssh/config file comes in really handy


bonus tidbit. Sometimes you have to create a set of symlinks for a whole directory. Yay for for loops!

prompt% for file in ls -A /webserverconfigurationfiles > do > fullfile=/webserverconfigurationfiles/$file > ln -s $fullfile $file > done


p.s. Hilton-UF in-room ethernet rocks.