Could x3270 and friends permit connecting to a unix domain socket, say something like U:SOCKETPATHGOESHERE for the host name. I gave a quick gander to the source, and I'm likely to botch hacking this in.
The reason I suggested the U: prefix is that some systems allow sun_path to be relative.
Thus U:wombat or U:./wombat would connect to a unix domain socket in the current directory; else you need to be more verbose. The main use case for me is an SSH forward
from a Hercules instance to a unix domain socket on the local machine. I may look at
Hercules to see how it might be extended to support unix domain sockets. I think that's
a bit smaller in its implementation. With both extensions, neither the host nor client would
have a public TCP port needing iptables trickery to safeguard.
Last edit: Christopher Oliver 2020-10-19
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I'm note sure why you can't just bind to 127.0.0.1:3270 in your server to avoid public exposure of the port, but i probably don't understand your use case well enough.
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Rather than using a prefix like U:, what about using a leading slash to indicate a Unix-domain socket? That's an invalid hostname character anyway.
I'd be happy to put that on my to-do list.
The reason I suggested the U: prefix is that some systems allow sun_path to be relative.
Thus U:wombat or U:./wombat would connect to a unix domain socket in the current directory; else you need to be more verbose. The main use case for me is an SSH forward
from a Hercules instance to a unix domain socket on the local machine. I may look at
Hercules to see how it might be extended to support unix domain sockets. I think that's
a bit smaller in its implementation. With both extensions, neither the host nor client would
have a public TCP port needing iptables trickery to safeguard.
Last edit: Christopher Oliver 2020-10-19
True, a prefix would be more general.
I'm note sure why you can't just bind to 127.0.0.1:3270 in your server to avoid public exposure of the port, but i probably don't understand your use case well enough.