When you want to access a localhost:8080 web app running on CSIL from a non-CSIL computer, e.g. your laptop:

At a command prompt (terminal prompt on MacOS, Linux, WSL, Windows 10, or git bash shell on Windows), you can type this:

ssh -L 1234:localhost:8080 username@csil.cs.ucsb.edu

That will set up port 1234 on your local machine as a tunnel to “localhost:8080” on the CSIL machine. Then, if you put localhost:1234 in your browser, you should be getting access to localhost:8080 on the CSIL machine you are ssh’ing into.

If using Auth0

If you are using Auth0, running on a specific csil machine (e.g. csil-04), already have localhost:8080 set up in the Allowed Callback URLs, Allowed Logout URLs and Allowed Web Origins, then you shoudl use a command like this one:

ssh -L 8080:localhost:8080 username@csil-04.cs.ucsb.edu

where:

  • username is your actual CSIL username
  • csil-04 is the specific CSIL machine on which you are running.
  • The first 8080 is always 8080 if that’s what’s in your Auth0 Allowed Callback URLs, Allowed Logout URLs and Allowed Web Origins.
  • The second 8080 might change to, say, 8081 if you are running on a different port than 8080 on the CSIL machine.

This is a preferred alternative to connecting directly to, say, http://csil-04.cs.ucsb.edu:8080, which may work for web apps that do not use Auth0, but may results in a blank page when Auth0 is used. In that case, the underlying cause of the blank page may be this one: https://github.com/auth0/auth0-spa-js/blob/master/FAQ.md#why-do-i-get-auth0-spa-js-must-run-on-a-secure-origin