Linux – How to forward X through two SSH tunnels

Place this in your .ssh/config file on hostA (see man 5 ssh_config for details):

# .ssh/config on hostA:
Host hostC
    ProxyCommand ssh hostB -W %h:%p

Now the following command will automatically tunnel through hostB

hostA:~$ ssh hostC

You may like to add options like -oCiphers=arcfour and -oClearAllForwardings=yes to speed things up, since wrapping ssh inside ssh is computationally more expensive and the extra effort and the wrapper doesn't need to be as secure when it's tunneling already-encrypted traffic.

If you are using OpenSSH earlier than 5.3, the -W option is not available. In this case you can implement the above using netcat (nc):

ProxyCommand ssh hostB nc %h %p  # or netcat or whatever you have on hostB

If your media system is connected to the TV, it depends on whether you are using X windows or a framebuffer to display graphics.

If you're using X windows, then since you DON'T want the output on YOUR machine, then you need to be logged in as the SAME user the X windows system is logged in as, (it's a permissions thing really).

Enter this environment variable export command in your ssh session to have X11 requests redirected to the local machine (the media box)

export DISPLAY=:0

This will cause mplayer to be redirected to the local media-box video, you'll still be able to control mplayer with the ssh connection using the various keyboard commands it supports. (f for fullscreen (or -fs option), q-quit, p-pause, etc...)

If you're using X11 to display, check out the 'xhost +localhost' command and possibly re-enabling the insecure unrestricted port 6000 access for your Xserver. Again, depends on how you set up your media box.

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if you're not using X windows, it'll probably work using the framebuffer output option of mplayer.

Try using mplayer with the '-vo fbdev' or '-vo fbdev2' option, telling mplayer to use the framebuffer to display output. Check the mplayer manual for more details. Those are the most likely to work, but there are other options, but they get more complicated.