At times you may need to remotely access the web interface of either a Cloudvue Gateway or camera. The following instructions can be used to establish a tunnel, gain ssh access and setup remote port forwarding via the reverse tunnel script. Once setup you will be able to access the terminal (ssh) or the Web Interface of equipment local to the video device, such as Cloudvue Local or C2C cameras (reverse port forwarding).
Product
C2C
Cloudvue Gateway
Solution
From Cloudvue Manager
Setup a Tunneling port, see “Cloudvue SSH Tunneling” KB# 13051
From your Tunneling Machine
Terminal Window #1 – Establish a Tunnel
./createTunnel.sh -t PNUM
Note: PNUM is the port number created in Cloudvue Manager
Terminal Window #2 – Establish SSH Connection
./sshTunnel.sh -p PNUM
$ watch -n 30 ls -alh
Note: PNUM is the port number created in Cloudvue Manager and the watch command is used to keep the connection from timing out use Ctrl+c to stop the watch command.
In the event the following warning appears run the full “ssh-keygen” command found in the message to clear the /root/.ssh/known_hosts file, then try establishing the ssh connection again.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@ WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED! @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Terminal Window #3 Establish Port Forwarding via Reverse Tunnel
./reverseTunnel.sh -p 80 -l 80
NOTE: it may be necessary to manually configure the correct tunneling port by changing ./config/tunnelInfo.txt
Certain information gathering or troubleshooting tasks such as gathering logs, doing software or firmware updates require remote access to devices. This is where tunneling comes into play and the following instructions explain the process.
Products
C2C
Cloudvue Gateway
Tunneling Machine Setup
To properly setup your tunneling machine the following must be completed once. The basic steps are:
Choose your environment
Generate an SSH key pair and submit your public key
Install jq
Install Visual Studio Code (optional)
Download and install tunneling scripts
Also available is the How to use tunnel scripts to upgrade firmware remotely video available here.
Choosing Your Environment
For ease of setup and overall usage it is recommend that you choose a machine running Linux. This can be a full VM such as provided by Hyper-V or using the recommended method, Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS or higher is needed and we have found that using WSL supplies access to useful tools such as MobaXterm.
Generating SSH Key Pair Without a Password
A ssh key pair must be generated from the machine you will be tunneling from. An AES ticket should be created requesting your public key (id_rsa.pub) be added to the Cloudvue SSH Tunneling Server and Cloudvue Software releases for C2C devices. Once added to the Cloudvue SSH Tunneling Server you can begin tunneling from your machine to Cloudvue Gateway devices and after the next Cloudvue Software release you will be able to tunnel to updated C2C devices.
To generate an SSH key pair, use the following command:
ssh-keygen -t rsa
By default, your keys are saved as follows:
Private Key
~/.ssh/id_rsa
RSA authentication identity
Should be kept secret
ssh will read this file when a login attempt is made
Public Key
~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
RSA public authentication key
No need for secrecy
Will be be added to C2C and Cloudvue Gateway devices for public key authentication
NOTE: A copy of your public key should be attached to the AES ticket requesting ssh access.
Install jq
jq is a lightweight and flexible command-line JSON processor and is required. It can be downloaded from https://stedolan.github.io/jq/download/ or by using the following commands
Visual Studio Code is a free, lightweight but powerful source code editor that runs on your desktop and is available for many platforms. It will allow you to easily display the contents of the extracted files especially useful for viewing help information and examples. See the following links for information on various ways to install on VM or WSL.
Search for the desired video device typically by MAC address
Open the device and Locate the Port Number field in the lower left
NOTE: You won’t see the tunneling option unless your staff user account has a role of either Global Admin or Support Specialist
Enter a random port number then click tunnel
A popup will appear indicating that the tunnel is being created
If successful the following popup will appear
If unsuccessful the following popup will appear, and it will be necessary to repeat the process trying a different port number
Once a tunneling port has been successfully created run the following command from terminal from the tunneling directory (~/Downloads/tunneling) using the port created above
./createTunnel.sh -t 4445
The script will return a lot of feedback. However before running other scripts verify that the last line is the same as the following
Back in Cloudvue Manager expand Network Settings to obtain the IP address of the device
Open a second tab or instance of terminal and run the following command from the tunneling directory (~/Downloads/tunneling) using the devices IP Address found in Cloudvue Manager.
./reverseTunnel.sh -u -i 10.1.1.64
The camera should now be available from a web browser at https://localhost:8080
The Username is admin and the password is obtained from the SSH field located on the devices Cloudvue Manager page.
Maintenance Page
Remote Access Page
About Page
SSH Access
After establishing the tunnel you can run the following command to gain SSH access using the port created earlier
