Connect to an oracle db in jdbc over an SSH tunnel

Question

Currently we have to tunnel over SSH to access our Oracle database. In order to do this we have to make sure than putty or an equivalent program/script is running on the server doing this tunelling before the application is deployed to Tomcat/Glassfish/etc.

Has anybody found a way to have java handle this tunneling transparently? Perhaps a jdbc driver than itself wraps another jdbc drive handling the tunnelling for you right in Java?

Answer 1

I have used Apache MINA SSHD for a project a while back and I remember that there was support ofr opening tunnels.

You can check out http://mina.apache.org/sshd/ for more info.

Other options are discussed on this quesiton : http://stackoverflow.com/questions/995944/ssh-library-for-java

Answer 2

My solution was to use Jsch from JCraft http://www.jcraft.com/jsch/ to open a tunnel when my application server starts up. I close the tunnel when the application server shuts down. I do this via a servlet context listener.

int findUnusedPort() {
        final int startingPort = 1025;
        final int endingPort = 1200;
        for (int port = 1025; port < 1200; port++) {
            ServerSocket serverSocket = null;
            try {
                serverSocket = new ServerSocket(port);
                return port;
            } catch (IOException e) {
                System.out.println("Port " + port + "is currently in use, retrying port " + port + 1);
            } finally {
                // Clean up
                if (serverSocket != null) try {
                    serverSocket.close();
                } catch (IOException e) {
                    throw new RuntimeException("Unable to close socket on port" + port, e);
                }
            }
        }
        throw new RuntimeException("Unable to find open port between " + startingPort + " and " + endingPort);
    }

private Session doSshTunnel(int tunnelPort) {
    // SSH Tunnel
    try {
        final JSch jsch = new JSch();
        sshSession = jsch.getSession("username", "sshhost", 22);
        final Hashtable<String, String> config = new Hashtable<String, String>();
        config.put("StrictHostKeyChecking", "no");
        sshSession.setConfig(config);
        sshSession.setPassword("password");

        sshSession.connect();

        int assigned_port = sshSession.setPortForwardingL(tunnelPort, remoteHost, remotePort);

        return sshSession;
    } catch (Exception e) {
        throw new RuntimeException("Unable to open SSH tunnel", e);
    }
}