Docker DB SSH Tunnel

Create a tunnel to connect to remote databases (MySQL, SQL Server, PostgreSQL).

Disclaimer

It used sshpass that considered as insecure because exposing plain password. Use this with your own risk!

Build Image

Provide this parameter on build you don't need to feed environment variables on running. Or if you don't want to rebuild the image for specific purpose, you cann pass it by passing environment variables.

docker build -t vendor/name:version \
    --build-arg SSH_HOST=tunnel_ssh_host \
    --build-arg SSH_USER=tunnel_ssh_user \
    --build-arg SSH_PASSWORD=tunnel_ssh_password \ 
    --build-arg DB_HOST=tunneled_db_host \
    --build-arg DB_PORT=tunneled_db_host \
    .

The default value of DB_HOST is localhost and default value of DB_PORT is 3306 (MySQL).

If you're using SQL Server or PostgreSQL, just point the DB_PORT to 1433 (SQL Server) or 5432 (PostgreSQL).

Example Build

Fore example, MySQL database on 10.1.2.3 and we have to connect to host 10.1.2.10, the SSH user for host 10.1.2.10 is user and the password is secret. We want to tunnel the connection to local on port 3333.

We give them name matriphe/tunnel:mysql1 so when we want to use this tunnel, we just create the container.

So we can build the image like this.

docker build -t matriphe/tunnel:mysql1 \
    --build-arg SSH_HOST=10.1.2.10 \
    --build-arg SSH_USER=user \
    --build-arg SSH_PASSWORD=secret \ 
    --build-arg DB_HOST=10.1.2.3 \
    --build-arg DB_PORT=3306 \
    .

Example Usage

To use the image, just run as usual. For example above, run this command.

docker run -d \
    --name=mysql1 \
    -p 3333:3306 \
    matriphe/tunnel:mysql1 

Now you can access MySQL on 10.1.2.3 from your host via tunnel.

mysql -u mysqlusername -p -P 3333 -h 127.0.0.1

Using Environment

If you don't want to rebuild images, you can use environment on running. For example, with same image, we want to connect to other server located on 192.168.1.123 with user newuser and password newsecret on SSH port 2222. We can use this command.

docker run -d \
    --name=mysql2 \
    -p 3333:3306 \
    -e SSH_HOST=192.168.1.123 \
    -e SSH_USER=newuser \
    -e SSH_PASSWORD=newsecret \
    -e SSH_PORT=2222 \
    -e DB_HOST=localhost \
    matriphe/tunnel:mysql1