A hack to make dbclient to tcp forwarding netcat style. eg ./dbclient -i testkey -L 1234:remotehost:remoteport tunnelhost will ssh to tunnelhost (using testkey, there's no way to ask for a password) and then tcpfwd to remotehost:remoteport on stdin/stdout. There's no way to give a cmdline password, so -i for a keyfile will have to do. Yet another reason for agent forwarding. The 1234 is a dummy var, I think it has to be a valid portnumber though.