Redirecting incoming tcp connections with redir

Sometimes you need an easy way to redirect incoming connections to another system. For example when migrating an old box to a new one. Today I came across an old note from myself explaining this. I thought it might be worth sharing 🙂

You’ll need the ‘redir’ program for this to work:

apt-get install redir

Redir redirects tcp connections coming in to a local port to a specified address/port combination like this:

redir –laddr=10.10.0.1 –lport=80 –caddr=10.10.10.1 –cport=80

This redirects web requests coming in at 10.10.0.1 to 10.10.10.1.

redir –laddr=10.10.0.1 –lport=21 –caddr=10.10.10.1 –cport=21 –ftp=both

And here the same for ftp. Note the –ftp option, this makes sure both passive and active ftp work.

Many years ago, when I didn’t know about this option, I had to rollback an upgrade in the middle of the night, because ftp redirection just didn’t work.. all I had to do was add –ftp=both to redir. I found it out the next morning, and did the upgrade again the following night. I’ll never forget! Just had to smile when I found the note today 🙂