what's the name of what I'm trying to do?
TCP relay
how do you think I can achieve that?
socat :
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socat TCP4-LISTEN:www TCP4:www.domain.org:www
installs a simple TCP port forwarder. With TCP4-LISTEN it listens on local port "www" until a connection comes in, accepts it, then connects to the remote host (TCP4) and starts data transfer. It will not accept a second connection.
socat -d -d -lmlocal2 \ TCP4-LISTEN:80,bind=myaddr1,su=nobody,fork,range=10.0.0.0/8,reuseaddr \ TCP4:www.domain.org:80,bind=myaddr2
TCP port forwarder, each side bound to another local IP address (bind). This example handles an almost arbitrary number of parallel or consecutive connections by fork'ing a new process after each accept() . It provides a little security by su'ing to user nobody after forking; it only permits connections from the private 10 network (range); due to reuseaddr, it allows immediate restart after master process's termination, even if some child sockets are not completely shut down. With -lmlocal2, socat logs to stderr until successfully reaching the accept loop. Further logging is directed to syslog with facility local2.
socat TCP4-LISTEN:5555,fork,tcpwrap=script \ EXEC:/bin/myscript,chroot=/home/sandbox,su-d=sandbox,pty,stderr
a simple server that accepts connections (TCP4-LISTEN) and fork's a new child process for each connection; every child acts as single relay. The client must match the rules for daemon process name "script" in /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny, otherwise it is refused access (see "man 5 hosts_access"). For EXEC'uting the program, the child process chroot's to /home/sandbox, su's to user sandbox, and then starts the program /home/sandbox/bin/myscript. Socat and myscript communicate via a pseudo tty (pty); myscript's stderr is redirected to stdout, so its error messages are transferred via socat to the connected client.
socat EXEC:"mail.sh [email protected]",fdin=3,fdout=4 \ TCP4:mail.relay.org:25,crnl,bind=alias1.server.org,mss=512
mail.sh is a shell script, distributed with socat, that implements a simple SMTP client. It is programmed to "speak" SMTP on its FDs 3 (in) and 4 (out). The fdin and fdout options tell socat to use these FDs for communication with the program. Because mail.sh inherits stdin and stdout while socat does not use them, the script can read a mail body from stdin. Socat makes alias1 your local source address (bind), cares for correct network line termination (crnl) and sends at most 512 data bytes per packet (mss).
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