Problems connecting Debian client to Debian ssh/proxy

[sbailey12]

I have a client PC that I am dual booting Winxp/Debian on. I have another PC (Also Debian) setup to run as a proxy server using ssh and privoxy. On the client PC in both Windows and Debian I am using putty to make my ssh connection. I can make the ssh connection without any problems in both operating systems. I have Firefox setup to connect to use the proxy server via 127.0.0.1/port 8118. While in Windows I can browse the internet fine but when I'm in Debian I get the following message:

The proxy server is refusing connections
Firefox is configured to use a proxy server that is refusing connections.
* Check the proxy settings to make sure that they are correct.
* Contact your network administrator to make sure the proxy server is
working.

There is no firewall running on the Debian client. I have been trying to figure out why this is happening but have had no luck. I even at one point had Ubuntu and Fedora installed as the client operating system, on the same machine, and got the same results, I can browse the internet in XP not so in while in Linux.

Any ideas? Is there some extra step that needs to be taken to get the Linux client to work?

[rhysox]

First of all, congratulations on using a linux distribution other than Ubuntu (i hate it!)

Secondly, 127.0.0.1 is a reference to 'localhost' i.e. the machine you're currently using.

Therefore, if you're using a different machine, it won't try and connect to the proxy, it will route straight to your machine, try and connect to port 8118, and obviously reject it!

Find out the IP of your linux server, and change the proxy setup on firefox whilst on your client pc to the server IP address and add the port number.

Let me know

[sbailey12]

That didn't seem to work. I'm basically trying to do the following: http://www.hackaday.com/2005/08/31/how-to-ssh-http-proxy-setup/

It's just a matter of setting up the host PC to run as a SSH server running Privoxy.

On the client PC, using Putty to make the connection to the server, tunnel the SSH traffic to 127.0.0.1 port 8118.

As I said before this setup does works fine while in XP (even pointing Firefox to 127.0.0.1 port 8118), but not when I'm in Debian.

[rhysox]

That's got to be because you haven't created the tunnel on the debian box, 8118 will not be open on 127.0.0.1 on the debian machine unless you specify it to be.

[sbailey12]

OK, I got it to work. I had to scrap using Putty, for whatever reason the tunnel setup was not working with it. I switched to gstm (gnome ssh tunnel manager), setup my ssh/tunnel settings in it, made my connection and I'm now good to go.