The right way to do it is: $ ssh -N -L <localport>:localhost:<serverport> <user>@<yourserver> and $ ssh -N -L 5000:localhost:5000 bob@bobsbookwonderl

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)