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4.7. Connecting to MySQL Remotely from Windows with SSH

This section describes how to get a secure connection to a remote MySQL server with SSH. The information was provided by David Carlson .

  1. Install an SSH client on your Windows machine. As a user, the best nonfree one I have found is from SecureCRT from http://www.vandyke.com/. Another option is f-secure from http://www.f-secure.com/. You can also find some free ones on Google at http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/Protocols/SSH/Clients/Windows/.

  2. Start your Windows SSH client. Set Host_Name = yourmysqlserver_URL_or_IP. Set userid=your_userid to log in to your server. This userid value might not be the same as the user name of your MySQL account.

  3. Set up port forwarding. Either do a remote forward (Set local_port: 3306, remote_host: yourmysqlservername_or_ip, remote_port: 3306 ) or a local forward (Set port: 3306, host: localhost, remote port: 3306).

  4. Save everything, otherwise you will have to redo it the next time.

  5. Log in to your server with the SSH session you just created.

  6. On your Windows machine, start some ODBC application (such as Access).

  7. Create a new file in Windows and link to MySQL using the ODBC driver the same way you normally do, except type in localhost for the MySQL host server, not yourmysqlservername.

At this point, you should have an ODBC connection to MySQL, encrypted using SSH.