rtunnel

rtunnel is a security-minded, user-friendly SSH tunnel manager. It wraps SSH local port forwarding (ssh -L ...) with simple commands to open, list, and close tunnels, with optional history so you can quickly reconnect later.

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Install

curl -fsSL https://github.com/FriendlyDev/rtunnel/releases/latest/download/install.sh | bash

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Open tunnels

Open a tunnel:

rtunnel open --name "grafana-staging" --local=80 --remote=8080 --ssh=user@hostname.tld

Opt-in: verify the tunnel stays up (--wait)

By default, rtunnel open starts ssh in the background and returns immediately.

If you want rtunnel to fail fast when SSH exits immediately (bad host, auth failure, forward rejected), use --wait:

• --wait defaults to 2.0 seconds
• you can pass a custom value like --wait=0.5

Examples:

rtunnel open --wait --name "grafana-staging" --local=80 --remote=8080 --ssh=user@hostname.tld
rtunnel open --wait=0.5 --name "grafana-staging" --local=80 --remote=8080 --ssh=user@hostname.tld

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JSON output (requires jq)

Many commands support --json to emit machine-readable output on stdout.

jq is required when using --json.

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Diagnostics

Run:

rtunnel doctor

Or machine-readable diagnostics:

rtunnel doctor --json | jq .

doctor reports:

• rtunnel version
• which config file was used (if any)
• availability of ssh/jq/fzf
• key paths (RTUNNEL_DIR, active/history/state)
• active tunnel counts and stale count

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