ssh -L 5548:127.0.0.1:548 user@host

If the box you're SSHing to is the machine you want to Appletalk to. Awesome. Otherwise change 127.0.0.1 to the name of the server you want to talk to as the remote machine sees it.

The initial 5548 part is a port on your machine that will become the gateway to the remote box. I chose 5548 because you don't have to be root to bind to it and it's moderately memorable. In the style of 8080. Anyway. To connect go to Finder and do Apple-K as normal. Then enter the URL afp://localhost:5548/. The SSH terminal session must be active for the forwarding to be open, unfortunately.

Couldn't you just start the ssh forwarding in the background with "&"?

[1]  + Suspended (tty output)        ssh -L 5548:127.0.0.1:548 user@host

Unfortunately.

A ha!

ssh -fNL 5548:127.0.0.1:548 user@host

-N tells SSH not to go into interactive mode even though no command is specified and -f puts it into the background. If you have a keyfile set up on the remote host, this command can be used without any user intervention.

If you would like to link to this entry, it will always be available at http://aftnn.org/journal/377.