Background process for ssh port forwarding

[Juho Schultz]

Jesse Rosenthal wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I'm writing a script which will backup data from my machine to a server
> using rsync. It checks to see if I am on the local network. If I am, it
> runs rsync over ssh to 192.168.2.6 using the pexpect module to log in.
> That's the easy part.
> 
> Now, when I'm not on the local network, I first want to open up an ssh
> connection to do port forwarding, so something like this:
> 
> def hostforward():
>     #This is based on the assumption that the passfile is the gnus
>     #authinfo file, or has a similar format...
>     f = open(PASS_FILE, "r")
>     f_list = f.read().split(' ')
>     f.close()
>     #Now, we get the entry after "password" (be slicker to make it a
>     #dictionary, but maybe wouldn't work as well).
>     pass_index = f_list.index('password') + 1
>     forwardpass = f_list[pass_index]
>     #now we connect
>     command = 'ssh -l %s -L 2022:%s:22 %s' % \
>               (login, my_server, forwarding_server)
>     connection = pexpect.spawn(command)
>     connection.expect('.*assword:')
>     connection.sendline(forwardpass)
> 
> If I end this with 'connection.interact()', I will end up logged in to the
> forwarding server. But what I really want is to go on and run rsync to
> localhost port 2022, which will forward to my_server port 22. So, how can
> I put the ssh connection I set up in hostforward() in the background?
> I need to make sure that connection is made before I can run the rsync
> command.
> 
> I've looked at threading, but that seems excessive. There must be an
> easier way. Whatever I do, though, I'll need to use pexpect to spawn the
> processes, since I'll need to log in to ssh servers with a password.
> 
> Thanks for any help.
> 
> --Jesse
> 
> 
I am not sure I understand you correctly (my english is a bit limited)
Can you not use something like:

rsync --timeout=5 -e "ssh --with-many-options"