pomerium/docs/docs/client.md

title	description
Pomerium TCP Clients	Learn how to create secured TCP connections to services behind Pomerium.

Pomerium Desktop and CLI Clients

Pomerium is capable of creating secure connections to services like SSH, Redis, and more by creating a TCP tunnel to the service with a local client. This article describes configuring a route to accept TCP connections, and using either the CLI or GUI client to connect to it.

Create a TCP Route

1. Specify this new Route as a TCP Route by prefixing tcp+ in the From field, along with a port suffix.

   The port is not used to connect to the Pomerium proxy service from the internet; this will always be port 443 (unless otherwise defined in config.yaml). Rather, the port defined in From is part of the mapping to the individual route. In this way, you can create multiple routes that share a DNS entry, differentiated by the port to determine which route they use.

   For example, suppose we have a server called augur running behind Pomerium that has a MySQL server and also listens for SSH connections. We can create routes for tcp+https://augur.example.com:22 and tcp+https://augur.example.com:3306.

2. The To field uses tcp:// as a protocol, and specifies the address and port the service listens on.

The example below demonstrates a route to the SSH service on the host running the Pomerium Core or Pomerium Enterprise service:

::::: tabs :::: tab Pomerium Core

  - from: tcp+https://ssh.localhost.pomerium.io:22
    to: tcp://127.0.0.1:22
    policy:
    - allow:
        or:
          - email:
              is: user@companydomain.com

:::: :::: tab Pomerium Enterprise

:::: :::::

TCP Client Software

You can connect to this route with either the Pomerium CLI or Pomerium Desktop client.

::::: tabs

:::: tab Pomerium Desktop

Install

Download the latest release from GitHub.

• Windows: The installer exe will install and open the Desktop Client. Right click on the system tray icon to interact with it.
• Linux: We provide Linux binaries as .AppImage files, which can be executed in place or managed with a tool like AppImageLauncher. Interact with the client from the system tray icon.
• macOS: Open the dmg and move the binary to Applications. Interact with the client from the system tray icon.

Add a Connection

Destination Url

Matches the From value of the route. Always include the port specified in the route, and do not include the https:// protocol.

Disable TLS Verification

Allows untrusted certificates from the Pomerium gateway

Local Address

(optional)

The local address and port number from which to access the service locally. If left blank, the client will choose a random port to listen to on the loopback address.

In most cases, you only need to specify the port (ex: :2222), and the client will listen on all available local addresses.

Alternate Pomerium Url

(optional)

The Pomerium proxy service address. This is required if the Destination URL can't be resolved from DNS or a local hosts entry, or if the proxy service uses a non-standard port.

CA File Path or CA File Text

(optional)

If your Pomerium proxy is using a certificate signed by a Certificate Authority (CA) that's not in your system's trusted key store, provide the CA certificate here. Alternately, you can toggle Disable TLS Verification.

:::: :::: tab Pomerium CLI

Install

See Release to learn how to install pomerium-cli in your environment.

Connect to a TCP Route

1. Invoke pomerium-cli with the tcp option, and provide the route to your service (As defined in from in your Route specification).

   pomerium-cli tcp ssh.localhost.pomerium.io:22
   2:06PM INF tcptunnel: listening on 127.0.0.1:36397
   

   You can optionally supply an address and/or port to the listen flag:

   pomerium-cli tcp ssh.localhost.pomerium.io:22 --listen :2222
   2:05PM INF tcptunnel: listening on [::]:2222
   

2. Connect to your service using the local address and port specified in the output of pomerium-cli:

   ssh 127.0.0.1 -p 2222
   

3. When the connection starts, the cli will open your browser and direct you to your Identity Provider to authenticate your session. Once authenticated the connection will continue and you can close the browser window.

4. In this example, since we are using SSH we can consolidate the TCP and SSH connections into a single command:

   ssh -o ProxyCommand='pomerium-cli tcp --listen - %h:%p' ssh.localhost.pomerium.io
   

:::: :::::

For more examples and detailed usage information, see TCP Support

Advanced Configuration

If Pomerium is listening on a port other than 443 (set with the address key), the pomerium-url flag (CLI) or "Alternate Pomerium URL" field (GUI) is required. This specifies the address and port for the client to communicate over, while the standard URL defines the port assignment for the specific route. For example:

pomerium-cli tcp ssh.localhost:pomerium.io:2222 \
   --pomerium-url https://ssh.localhost.pomerium.io:8443 \
   --listen :2222