Q:

Permanent SSH Connection via Bash Script?

I have two OpenSolaris servers.  The remote server has a MySQL database.  MySQL is configured with skip-networking; so, I can't access that database from the first server by simply using the hostname and port.
I must have an ssh tunnel setup to connect to MySQL from the local server.  I can do this with a simple : ssh -L 3350:localhost:3306 user@server and SSH keys.  It works great.
However, I need the connection to be permanent and preferably run on bootup as well.
I've created a little bash script to create the connection.  However, it simply connects, ends the script, and loses the ssh connection.  If I modify the script to run a command on the remote server and and a sleep command, it will stay connected for X seconds.  I can then connect with MySQL.  However, I will surely lose the connection after X seconds.
Does anyone have suggestions for a more elegant way to do this?  Is there someway to use Solaris' svcadm to create the connection and maintain it at all times?
UPDATE : I've discovered that if I add sleep X and then create the MySQL connection before X expires, the ssh connection stays up indefinitely.  However, that is not a very stable solution.  If I lose the database connection, the ssh connection dies and then I'll be stuck without being able to connect again.

A:

You want the -N option to OpenSSH.  For example:
ssh -N -L 3350:localhost:3306 user@server &

