Port forwarding

Ctrl-f on a host starts an SSH tunnel that keeps running after you quit sshelf — set it up, close the TUI (or the whole terminal), and it stays up until you stop it or it drops.

Creating a forward (Ctrl-f)

Pick a kind (cycle with ←/→):

• Local (-L, the default) — a local port that tunnels to something reachable from the server. E.g. reach the server’s private database as 127.0.0.1:8080 on your machine.
• Remote (-R) — a port on the server that tunnels back to something reachable from your machine. E.g. let someone on the server’s network reach a dev server on your laptop.
• Dynamic (-D) — a local SOCKS proxy that routes traffic through the server.

Fill in the ports/host — defaults: bind 127.0.0.1, target host localhost — and press Ctrl-s. sshelf spawns a detached ssh -N … reusing the host’s auth exactly as connect does (keys/agent/ProxyJump, stored password, site defaults), then waits briefly to confirm the tunnel actually bound. A failure is shown in the popup so you can fix a field and retry:

• local port already in use — pick another port;
• privileged port — ports below 1024 need root; use 1024 or higher;
• server refused the remote bind — the server’s sshd controls remote binds (GatewayPorts);
• authentication / DNS failures, reported as-is.

On success you’re back at the list and the tunnel runs on its own.

The forwards manager (F4)

Lists every active forward across all hosts — host, a summary like L 127.0.0.1:8080 → db:3306, pid, and age.

The list refreshes live and is reconciled against the actually-running processes: a forward that ends — stopped here, killed from another terminal, or dropped on its own after sleep or network loss — disappears within a moment, and on every launch sshelf shows only forwards that are still really up. The ledger lives in forwards.json (data model), but the processes are authoritative — the file is just remembered PIDs. Design details: decisions.md, D-021.

Why they survive

Each forward is its own detached process in its own process group, with no tie to sshelf or your terminal: quitting sshelf orphans it (fine), and closing the terminal doesn’t hang it up. Stop one from F4 — or kill <pid> works too; sshelf notices either way.