AndroidIRC, bip and SSHTunnel on your Android device

Dustin Kirkland recently wrote a blog post on how to maintain your connection to your favorite irc server/channels open using bip and how to connect to your bip proxy using your favorite IRC client.

I thought I could expand a bit on that blog post and write about how to accomplish something similar from your rooted android device once you have a properly configured bip proxy as per Dustin's post.

In this blog post, I'll be using:

• Motorola Atrix 4G ( rooted )
• AndroidIRC
• SSHTunnel ( Beta ) ( requires root )

First, install AndroidIRC and SSHTunnel ( Beta ) from the Market

SSHTunnel is a very simple app that sets up an ssh tunnel from your android device.  To configure SSHTunnel to work with your bip proxy server, configure it as follows ( the settings I don't mention, leave blank ):

• Host:  <the fully qualified hostname or IP of the machine running your bip proxy server> 
• ie: bip.example.com
• Port:  <the port number that is bound to your ssh server>  
• this will more than likely be 22
• User:  < the username you use to log on to the machine running your bip proxy >
• Password / Passphrase:  < self explanatory here.  The ssh password to log in as the above provided Username.
• Local Port: 7778 ( the port number on your Android device to be forwarded )
• Remote Port:  7778 ( the port number on your bip proxy server  that will receive the forwarded local port connections )
• Turn your conection by tapping the Tunnel Switch option at the top of the screen.

Now configure your AndroidIRC as follows:

• Name: <any name that you'll recognize>
• Address: localhost
• Port: 7778 ( if configured per instructions above )

That's all that's needed to configure on AndroidIRC and SSHTunnel.

This setup, in combination with Dustin's blog post about bip proxy server, provides an alternative that keeps you connected even when you're not :)

-Juan