ssh in rc.local stalls

[Mike McGrath]

Steve Brueckner wrote:

>I need to create an ssh port forwarding tunnel to another machine when my
>Xen VM starts up, so I added this to the VM's /etc/rc.d/rc.local:
>
>ssh -f -L 5500:localhost:5501 remote_host_ip tail -f /dev/null
>
>This causes my VM to pause for about 3 minutes during boot right after 
>"Starting HAL daemon: [  OK  ]"
>Furthermore, the ssh tunnel never gets created.
>
>I have null-passphrase authentication keys working, so I can execute the
>tunnel manually after I log in.  So why won't the tunnel work before I log
>in?
>
>I don't get any errors in /var/log/messages, just a 3-minute gap between
>entries.  Is there anywhere else I can look to find potential error
>messages?
>
>When I try the same trick on the bare-metal host machine, it works fine: no
>3-minute stall and the ssh tunnel is created fine.  So I suppose what I need
>is a way to find or create error messages so I can diagnose further.  Maybe
>then I can take this to the Xen list.
>
>Stephen Brueckner, ATC-NY
>
>  
>
I use the following method to create ssh tunnels on startup: (in inittab)

log1:3:respawn:/usr/bin/ssh -nNtx -R 5500:localhost:5501 remote_host_ip > /dev/null 2>&1 

This, however, may not solve your problem.  Are you sure you're public and
private keys are in the right spot and have the correct permissions?

	-Mike