hts/htc-3.3 oddity

[Nadim Shaikli]

Hello there, I've been trying for days now to connect using hts/htc on
a debian system to no avail.  Everything works for me if there is no
proxy involved, but at work (behind a HTTP proxy - squid I believe)
the port number that seems to want to connect to my outside linux box
seems to be rolling for some reason (its really odd).  Let me note
some further info.

On my outside linux box, I have two processes (I have 2 simply for grins),

 $ hts -F localhost:22 8888
 $ hts -F localhost:22 8890

On my windows (and/or linux box) at work behind the proxy I do,

 $ htc -A my_user:my_pass -P proxy2.hostname.com:8080 \
       -F 2200 outsidebox.org:8890
 $ ssh localhost -p 2200

NOTE: I use 2200 instead of just 22 since the local machine (in linux
at least) seems to answer the 'ssh localhost' instead of going through
the tunnel for some reason (I have no idea how to tell it otherwise
except to do the above).

and this is what I see on my outside linux box (/var/log/daemon.log),

May 19 12:18:19 sina hts[17209]: connection from 167.165.41.125:40432
May 19 12:18:29 sina hts[17209]: tunnel_accept: poll timed out
May 19 12:18:29 sina hts[17209]: tunnel_accept: in_fd = -1, out_fd = 5
May 19 12:18:29 sina hts[17209]: couldn't accept connection: Success
May 19 12:18:30 sina hts[17209]: connection from 167.165.41.125:40564
May 19 12:18:40 sina hts[17209]: tunnel_accept: poll timed out
May 19 12:18:40 sina hts[17209]: tunnel_accept: in_fd = -1, out_fd = 5
May 19 12:18:40 sina hts[17209]: couldn't accept connection: Success
May 19 12:18:40 sina hts[17209]: connection from 167.165.41.125:40696
May 19 12:18:50 sina hts[17209]: tunnel_accept: poll timed out
May 19 12:18:50 sina hts[17209]: tunnel_accept: in_fd = -1, out_fd = 5
May 19 12:18:50 sina hts[17209]: couldn't accept connection: Success
May 19 12:18:50 sina hts[17209]: connection from 167.165.41.125:40836
May 19 12:19:00 sina hts[17209]: tunnel_accept: poll timed out
May 19 12:19:00 sina hts[17209]: tunnel_accept: in_fd = -1, out_fd = 5
May 19 12:19:01 sina hts[17209]: couldn't accept connection: Success

etc,etc

Note: I've changed the IP address to protect the guilty :-)

Of interest is the increasing port number (shouldn't that thing be 8890 ?).
Why is this happening ?  Could it be that the proxy is doing that on
purpose not to allow people to tunnel ?  If so I've used htthost/httport
and it works fine (slow but works), so I'm guessing its either a bug or
I'm doing something wrong (I suspect the later :-)  Or is this the port
the proxy itself is using to get out (has nothing to do with what its
trying to contact to).

I've noticed that my successful connections (ie. the ones without proxy)
noted a port of 4070, 4162, 4806 and 4807 (what am I missing here) ?

What do I need to do to get a connection from within work and how best to
debug this (at least I know the work proxy host is touching my outside
linux box :-)

BTW: The default port 80 is not doable on my outside linux box since I
     have apache running on it (you might consider a different default).

Do please help.

Regards,

 - Nadim