[clug] ssh / mail problems

[Nathan Rickerby]

On Thu, Apr 29, 2004 at 06:43:10PM +0200, Andreas Bauer wrote:
>Dear list,
>
>I'm using a local postfix install to relay mail onto my university
>account.  In my .xsession I have:
>
>/usr/bin/ssh -L 2525:remote-server:25 -l username -N remote-server &
>
>This works nicely, for a while at least.  If, for some reason, my wlan
>connection drops or some other weirdness occurs then my ssh connection
>silently drops, too.  In that case, I don't get a notification, or
>anything.  Of course, from that point on, all mail is silently dropped
>as well.
>
>So, my question is: what's a better way of tunneling SMTP and how to
>make lost network connections (and the like) explicit to the user?
>Has anyone got a similar setup running and knows how to deal with
>problems like that?

I've found autossh useful in maintaining a ssh connection for a
similar setup.  If you need to notify the user of a disconnection,
perhaps you could make ssh display a xmessage(1) when it restarts
ssh.
 
http://www.harding.motd.ca/autossh/