9 ms·

Localtunnel: Show localhost to the rest of the world

135 points by rohshall 14y ago

lukeholder 14y ago
great service, although it has been posted before. The popular alternative was https://showoff.io https://showoff.io but this is a payed service. I believe local tunnel is free because it is sponsored by twilio. I also recommend http://xip.io http://xip.io for sharing within the same network.
simonw 14y ago
"gem install X" never, ever works for me on the first try (on OS X AND on Ubuntu, as someone who rarely does any Ruby hacking). I wish packages like this would include a link to somewhere that helps troubleshoot things when they go wrong. Last time I used localtunnel I eventually figured out I needed to run "sudo apt-get install ruby1.9.1-dev" first.
- lukeholder 14y ago
  well yeah you need ruby to run a ruby gem?
  - mst 14y ago
    More importantly, apparently in this case you need the ruby dev package to install the relevant gem from source.
  - kevindication 14y ago
    Smug reply implies that gems are only for people who develop in ruby.
    - nicholassmith 14y ago
      Smug reply says that gems require things to work, and given that they're usually dependent on some version of ruby then the smug reply is usually right.
      - kevindication 14y ago
        It's not generally obvious to non-developer end users that they will (sometimes) need to install the -dev package on their OS. Would be nice if it were. I'm mostly taking issue with the unfriendliness of the comment.
    - k33n 14y ago
      Gems ARE only for people who develop in ruby.
      - kevindication 14y ago
        Did you happen to read the article? It has nothing to do with developing in ruby.
        k33n 14y ago
        There is no article attached to this post. Just the homepage of a small piece of software targeted at developers who are familiar with installing gems. If YOU read the content that was linked, you'd see there is a very long README targeted at people who aren't Ruby developers.
  - simonw 14y ago
    I had ruby - I was missing the ruby-dev header files. My original complaint though is that people are using "gem install" as the sole documentation for installing a general purpose command-line tool. I'd rather not even know it's written in Ruby (I just want to install it and use it) - instead, I need deep Ruby knowledge just to get the thing running.
    - k33n 14y ago
      If knowing how to type "yum install ruby-devel" qualifies as "deep Ruby knowledge", I must be some kind of god.
    - progrium 14y ago
      I hate that it's using gem for install, too.
- ericcholis 14y ago
  Strange that you mention this, because it ALWAYS works for me on my Windows machine. Kind of nice to be on the other side of the fence for a change....
- ZoFreX 14y ago
  I used to be an occasional Ruby user and it was only after I started using it more often that I got the hang of things. I can give you a "pro tip", which is to never, ever use the Ruby provided by your distro, and to always use RVM. Getting RVM running on OS X and Ubuntu should be smooth sailing, and you'll find that installing gems just works after that. The only caveat is that some gems require compilation of native C extensions, which if you don't regularly compile things on your machine may require you to install lots of extra stuff (especially on the Mac).
  - dasil003 14y ago
    The state of affairs with Ruby OS integration is pretty poor. It's not a problem for me because Ruby is my bread and butter, so of course I have rvm (or rbenv) installed at all times. But as I user I think it's unacceptable to have to do a manual installation just to run extremely simple programs. It'd be nice if the community were more responsive to fixing the problems faced by the package manager maintainers.
    - halostatue 14y ago
      IMO, it'd also be nicer if package manager maintainers worked harder to not break the default assumptions of Ruby developers. All of the RubyGems developers are volunteers—as are most (if not all) of the various package manager maintainers. The way that Debian broke Ruby in the past (I don't know if it still does, but I have heard reports that it's better)…was unconscionable. (This mostly because Debian tried to treat RubyGems like C-based libraries, which are hard to have multiple usable versions of; RubyGems was based on the idea that you might need multiple usable versions of a package around.)
      - ZoFreX 14y ago
        Rather than repos providing out of date Rubies and gems, wouldn't it make sense to solve the conflict between the two approaches in just one place, and make nice reliable RVM packages for everyone to use if they need Ruby?
    - 14y ago
- heretohelp 14y ago
  It's about the same for Pythonistas, but I think I generally have less trouble with Python packages than Ruby packages.
vidar 14y ago
http://pagekite.net/ http://pagekite.net/ is a great alternative (Python based)
- HerraBRE 14y ago
  Author of PageKite here - funny to see this reposted yet again. :-) In case anyone has any comments/questions/... we're listening. Also, if you haven't checked out PageKite in a while, the most recent 0.5 release fixes a lot of minor issues the older versions had, it may be worth another look, especially if folks are using Windows or aren't based in "the west" (we recently deployed a relay server in Asia, in addition to our American and European relays).
  - swah 14y ago
    I just opened the two pages in rapid sucession (Localtunnel -> Pagekite) and was surprised by how different they are. wink
    - HerraBRE 14y ago
      PageKite is not a localtunnel clone, it is a much bigger concept. Otherwise I wouldn't have founded a company around it. It just happens that the use case for web developers overlaps and that is what folks seem to care about around here. :-)
      - progrium 14y ago
        How much bigger?
        HerraBRE 14y ago
        http://pagekite.net/wiki/Floss/FreedomAndPrivacy/ http://pagekite.net/wiki/Floss/FreedomAndPrivacy/ is what motivates me - PageKite is an attempt to bootstrap a peer-to-peer web where IP addresses don't matter anymore and servers can run literally anywhere, so people can actually self-host content at home without learning all about IP addresses, routers, firewalls, DNS, SSL, ... I don't know how much bigger that is than your vision, since I can only guess what your vision is. :-) I can guess based on your design, that until now you haven't cared much about people using localtunnel for anything except dev testing.
tomjakubowski 14y ago
Could this be used to tunnel something other than HTTP?
- HerraBRE 14y ago
  I don't think Localtunnel can, but PageKite will carry any TCP stream as long as the client knows how to prefix its request with an HTTP CONNECT preamble. This has mostly proven popular for remote administration via. SSH, since most SSH clients can easily be configured to take advantage of this: http://pagekite.net/wiki/Howto/SshOverPageKite/ http://pagekite.net/wiki/Howto/SshOverPageKite/ We are also quite open to the idea of supporting other protocols, but it turns out relatively few Internet protocols are amenable to "name based virtual routing" (the same thing as name based virtual hosting, except routing connection streams by name instead of serving local content).
  - _delirium 14y ago
    That's pretty neat. When I need to make a firewalled machine SSHable I typically set up an 'ssh -R' reverse tunnel to a VPS, and then do a two-step connect (ssh to the VPS, ssh to localhost through the tunnel). PageKite seems like it might be a more convenient way to get that up and running.
    - HerraBRE 14y ago
      Obviously, I am biased, but I use this all the time. It's just so nice to be able to use ssh and rsync and git and all the other standard tools to interact with mobile and virtual devices, no matter what kind of network connection they have. The .deb/.rpm packages just make this feature part of the OS as far as I am concerned.
krenoten 14y ago
In case you want to access localhost on a server you're working remotely on, and would rather show localhost to your local machine than the world: $ ssh -N <user>@<yourserver> -L <localport>/localhost/<serverport> so if I'm bob at bobsbookwonderland.com, and I run a test server there on its localhost 5000 that I want to access from home, I'd type (from home): $ ssh -N bob@bobsbookwonderland.com -L 5000/localhost/5000 and then on my local machine I'd just point my web browser to localhost:5000 as if I were running the test server locally.
- veyron 14y ago
  The right way to do it is: $ ssh -N -L <localport>:localhost:<serverport> <user>@<yourserver> and $ ssh -N -L 5000:localhost:5000 bob@bobsbookwonderland.com (the : is standard syntax used on platforms, including OSX and PuTTY, and some platforms don't support getopt arguments after the first non-flag argument)
  - shabble 14y ago
    Another useful setting is -g Allows remote hosts to connect to local forwarded ports. if you want to allow non-local connections.
baud 14y ago
http://proxylocal.com http://proxylocal.com does the same also and the code is open-sourced
ra 14y ago
localtunnel, hmmm sounds familiar... http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=localtunnel&start=0 http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=loc...
progrium 14y ago
The one day I get bored and check Hacker News, localtunnel is again on the front page. I'm really happy people appreciate it and people keep discovering it. I just want to apologize for neglecting it for so long. People continue to use it despite a few bugs that I've never addressed. When I get back from vacation, I'm going to focus on releasing v2, which has been in the works for a while. It will continue to be a free service supported by me and hopefully someday the community. Twilio is mentioned, but only because I worked for them recently. Their designer also threw together the website design. I also want to point out that with version 2 coming out, I'd love input on how to cultivate more community involvement and contributions. I want localtunnel to live for as long as people want to use it, but I will probably move on from it much sooner. Anyway, thanks again!
- rmanalan 14y ago
  Thanks for building this. I use this all the time.
darkstalker 14y ago
What's the difference between this and opening a port in your router?
- karolist 14y ago
  I think this is targeted at users who don't have the ability to forward ports on their routers.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- karolist 14y ago
  This service exposes your local port to the internet without the need to forward ports (which could get hairy quickly if you're behind multiple NAT layers), I don't see how it's related to serving directory contents through inbuilt python web server that you mention.
lysol 14y ago
Here's one that's shell-based: http://i8a.be/ http://i8a.be/
- HerraBRE 14y ago
  Very, very nice. Did you write it?
  - lysol 14y ago
    Nope, but a friend did.

135 points by rohshall 14y ago

great service, although it has been posted before. The popular alternative was https://showoff.io https://showoff.io but this is a payed service. I believe local tunnel is free because it is sponsored by twilio. I also recommend http://xip.io http://xip.io for sharing within the same network.

simonw 14y ago

"gem install X" never, ever works for me on the first try (on OS X AND on Ubuntu, as someone who rarely does any Ruby hacking). I wish packages like this would include a link to somewhere that helps troubleshoot things when they go wrong. Last time I used localtunnel I eventually figured out I needed to run "sudo apt-get install ruby1.9.1-dev" first.

lukeholder 14y ago
well yeah you need ruby to run a ruby gem?
- mst 14y ago
  More importantly, apparently in this case you need the ruby dev package to install the relevant gem from source.
- kevindication 14y ago
  Smug reply implies that gems are only for people who develop in ruby.
  - nicholassmith 14y ago
    Smug reply says that gems require things to work, and given that they're usually dependent on some version of ruby then the smug reply is usually right.
    - kevindication 14y ago
      It's not generally obvious to non-developer end users that they will (sometimes) need to install the -dev package on their OS. Would be nice if it were. I'm mostly taking issue with the unfriendliness of the comment.
  - k33n 14y ago
    Gems ARE only for people who develop in ruby.
    - kevindication 14y ago
      Did you happen to read the article? It has nothing to do with developing in ruby.
      - k33n 14y ago
        There is no article attached to this post. Just the homepage of a small piece of software targeted at developers who are familiar with installing gems. If YOU read the content that was linked, you'd see there is a very long README targeted at people who aren't Ruby developers.
- simonw 14y ago
  I had ruby - I was missing the ruby-dev header files. My original complaint though is that people are using "gem install" as the sole documentation for installing a general purpose command-line tool. I'd rather not even know it's written in Ruby (I just want to install it and use it) - instead, I need deep Ruby knowledge just to get the thing running.
  - k33n 14y ago
    If knowing how to type "yum install ruby-devel" qualifies as "deep Ruby knowledge", I must be some kind of god.
  - progrium 14y ago
    I hate that it's using gem for install, too.
ericcholis 14y ago
Strange that you mention this, because it ALWAYS works for me on my Windows machine. Kind of nice to be on the other side of the fence for a change....
ZoFreX 14y ago
I used to be an occasional Ruby user and it was only after I started using it more often that I got the hang of things. I can give you a "pro tip", which is to never, ever use the Ruby provided by your distro, and to always use RVM. Getting RVM running on OS X and Ubuntu should be smooth sailing, and you'll find that installing gems just works after that. The only caveat is that some gems require compilation of native C extensions, which if you don't regularly compile things on your machine may require you to install lots of extra stuff (especially on the Mac).
- dasil003 14y ago
  The state of affairs with Ruby OS integration is pretty poor. It's not a problem for me because Ruby is my bread and butter, so of course I have rvm (or rbenv) installed at all times. But as I user I think it's unacceptable to have to do a manual installation just to run extremely simple programs. It'd be nice if the community were more responsive to fixing the problems faced by the package manager maintainers.
  - halostatue 14y ago
    IMO, it'd also be nicer if package manager maintainers worked harder to not break the default assumptions of Ruby developers. All of the RubyGems developers are volunteers—as are most (if not all) of the various package manager maintainers. The way that Debian broke Ruby in the past (I don't know if it still does, but I have heard reports that it's better)…was unconscionable. (This mostly because Debian tried to treat RubyGems like C-based libraries, which are hard to have multiple usable versions of; RubyGems was based on the idea that you might need multiple usable versions of a package around.)
    - ZoFreX 14y ago
      Rather than repos providing out of date Rubies and gems, wouldn't it make sense to solve the conflict between the two approaches in just one place, and make nice reliable RVM packages for everyone to use if they need Ruby?
  - 14y ago
heretohelp 14y ago
It's about the same for Pythonistas, but I think I generally have less trouble with Python packages than Ruby packages.

vidar 14y ago

http://pagekite.net/ http://pagekite.net/ is a great alternative (Python based)

HerraBRE 14y ago
Author of PageKite here - funny to see this reposted yet again. :-) In case anyone has any comments/questions/... we're listening. Also, if you haven't checked out PageKite in a while, the most recent 0.5 release fixes a lot of minor issues the older versions had, it may be worth another look, especially if folks are using Windows or aren't based in "the west" (we recently deployed a relay server in Asia, in addition to our American and European relays).
- swah 14y ago
  I just opened the two pages in rapid sucession (Localtunnel -> Pagekite) and was surprised by how different they are. wink
  - HerraBRE 14y ago
    PageKite is not a localtunnel clone, it is a much bigger concept. Otherwise I wouldn't have founded a company around it. It just happens that the use case for web developers overlaps and that is what folks seem to care about around here. :-)
    - progrium 14y ago
      How much bigger?
      - HerraBRE 14y ago
        http://pagekite.net/wiki/Floss/FreedomAndPrivacy/ http://pagekite.net/wiki/Floss/FreedomAndPrivacy/ is what motivates me - PageKite is an attempt to bootstrap a peer-to-peer web where IP addresses don't matter anymore and servers can run literally anywhere, so people can actually self-host content at home without learning all about IP addresses, routers, firewalls, DNS, SSL, ... I don't know how much bigger that is than your vision, since I can only guess what your vision is. :-) I can guess based on your design, that until now you haven't cared much about people using localtunnel for anything except dev testing.

tomjakubowski 14y ago

Could this be used to tunnel something other than HTTP?

HerraBRE 14y ago
I don't think Localtunnel can, but PageKite will carry any TCP stream as long as the client knows how to prefix its request with an HTTP CONNECT preamble. This has mostly proven popular for remote administration via. SSH, since most SSH clients can easily be configured to take advantage of this: http://pagekite.net/wiki/Howto/SshOverPageKite/ http://pagekite.net/wiki/Howto/SshOverPageKite/ We are also quite open to the idea of supporting other protocols, but it turns out relatively few Internet protocols are amenable to "name based virtual routing" (the same thing as name based virtual hosting, except routing connection streams by name instead of serving local content).
- _delirium 14y ago
  That's pretty neat. When I need to make a firewalled machine SSHable I typically set up an 'ssh -R' reverse tunnel to a VPS, and then do a two-step connect (ssh to the VPS, ssh to localhost through the tunnel). PageKite seems like it might be a more convenient way to get that up and running.
  - HerraBRE 14y ago
    Obviously, I am biased, but I use this all the time. It's just so nice to be able to use ssh and rsync and git and all the other standard tools to interact with mobile and virtual devices, no matter what kind of network connection they have. The .deb/.rpm packages just make this feature part of the OS as far as I am concerned.

krenoten 14y ago

In case you want to access localhost on a server you're working remotely on, and would rather show localhost to your local machine than the world: $ ssh -N <user>@<yourserver> -L <localport>/localhost/<serverport> so if I'm bob at bobsbookwonderland.com, and I run a test server there on its localhost 5000 that I want to access from home, I'd type (from home): $ ssh -N bob@bobsbookwonderland.com -L 5000/localhost/5000 and then on my local machine I'd just point my web browser to localhost:5000 as if I were running the test server locally.

veyron 14y ago
The right way to do it is: $ ssh -N -L <localport>:localhost:<serverport> <user>@<yourserver> and $ ssh -N -L 5000:localhost:5000 bob@bobsbookwonderland.com (the : is standard syntax used on platforms, including OSX and PuTTY, and some platforms don't support getopt arguments after the first non-flag argument)
- shabble 14y ago
  Another useful setting is -g Allows remote hosts to connect to local forwarded ports. if you want to allow non-local connections.

baud 14y ago

http://proxylocal.com http://proxylocal.com does the same also and the code is open-sourced

ra 14y ago

localtunnel, hmmm sounds familiar... http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=localtunnel&start=0 http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=loc...

progrium 14y ago

The one day I get bored and check Hacker News, localtunnel is again on the front page. I'm really happy people appreciate it and people keep discovering it. I just want to apologize for neglecting it for so long. People continue to use it despite a few bugs that I've never addressed. When I get back from vacation, I'm going to focus on releasing v2, which has been in the works for a while. It will continue to be a free service supported by me and hopefully someday the community. Twilio is mentioned, but only because I worked for them recently. Their designer also threw together the website design. I also want to point out that with version 2 coming out, I'd love input on how to cultivate more community involvement and contributions. I want localtunnel to live for as long as people want to use it, but I will probably move on from it much sooner. Anyway, thanks again!

rmanalan 14y ago
Thanks for building this. I use this all the time.

darkstalker 14y ago

What's the difference between this and opening a port in your router?

karolist 14y ago
I think this is targeted at users who don't have the ability to forward ports on their routers.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

karolist 14y ago
This service exposes your local port to the internet without the need to forward ports (which could get hairy quickly if you're behind multiple NAT layers), I don't see how it's related to serving directory contents through inbuilt python web server that you mention.

lysol 14y ago

Here's one that's shell-based: http://i8a.be/ http://i8a.be/

HerraBRE 14y ago
Very, very nice. Did you write it?
- lysol 14y ago
  Nope, but a friend did.