ssh http proxy, but can't sudo in server

Question

I have access to a server through ssh, but I want to be able to use that server to surf the web from my computer. I'm not sure if that's called setting up an HTTP proxy through SSH, but I can't modify /etc/ssh/sshd_config because I'm not sudo.

I'm pretty sure there must be a way, because I can ssh to the server and do a wget there to download a file, and then do an scp to copy it to my computer. I'm just wondering if there's a simpler way, so I can use my local browser as if it were the browser in the server (basically, I'm trying to download scientific articles in pdf format).

Answer 1

If your browser supports SOCKS proxies, then it's trivial:

ssh workmachine -D 7099

Now configure your local machine to use a SOCKS proxy on localhost:7099. (Any number is fine for the port.)

If your browser does not support SOCKS proxies, then you should run an HTTP proxy on the remote machine (like tinyproxy) and make tunnel to that:

# Remote machine: tinyproxy listening on 6077

# Your machine:
ssh workmachine -L 7077:localhost:6077

Now configure your web browser to use HTTP proxy localhost:7077.

This generally works easiest if you've set up your own ~/.ssh/config to include the alias workmachine, as well as the public/private key pair to let you in without password entry. You can put the tunnel configuration into the config file, too (see DynamicForward and LocalForward).