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Comment by fooblat | Hacker News Reader

Great write up!

One thing to add is that you can even open tunnels during an interactive session without disconnection.

To do this, type the escape command sequence ~C (will not show) and it will drop you to the control prompt. You can then add tunnels.

     ssh>
     ssh> -L 8000:localhost:9000 
     Forwarding port.

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I’ve been using ssh for 25+ years, I wrote a (in hindsight, pretty awful) article about it for Linux Journal, and I never knew this.

Since this tip is popular I'll share another related tip.

When using nested ssh session, you can send escape commands to any of them by the number of tildes. For example, if you ssh into Server A and then from Server A to Server B:

    ~~.   # drop session from Server A to Server B
    ~.    # drop original session into Server A

I sometimes have to hit a <return> before the ~. disconnect works. Not sure why.

Because iirc, ssh only interprets the tilde if it's immediately preceded by a newline.

Is ~ a literal ~ character? Or notation for some modifier key? I only knew about ^ to mean "control".

Literal ~. Its input as a sequencenot as a modifier. Iirc the sequence ~h or ~? prints a little help page

Warning, if you read comradesmith's comment even more literally and type "~." (tilde and period) in an SSH session, that will close the connection and exit the client. It is useful when a remote application hangs and does not let you exit gracefully: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/35524/what-can-i-d...

Yes, but you need to press enter before using it. Try typing `⏎~?' in an SSH session.

Well, there's something I didn't know. Thank you for the time and tab savings!

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