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AmitA
Asked: 2016-10-27 10:49:57 +0800 CST

Is it possible to expose an HTTP proxy on localhost via ngrok?

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I have tinyproxy installed on localhost (I also tried squid and failed similarly). It runs on port 8888. This works:

curl -x localhost:8888 http://www.google.com

And I see output in the tinyproxy logs.

Now I run the latest version of ngrok and get the following forwarding established:

http://<identifier>.ngrok.io -> localhost:8888

If I open http://<identifier>.ngrok.io on my browser the ngrok connection counter goes up, and I successfully see tinyproxy's "not implemented" error page.

However, this fails:

curl -x <identifier>.ngrok.io:80 http://www.google.com
# => curl: (56) Received HTTP code 404 from proxy after CONNECT

The ngrok counter does not go up, and I do not see messages in the tinyproxy logs, suggesting that the failure is before ngrok accepted the connection.

What am I missing here? I had assumed that both ngrok and tinyproxy forward the HTTP request, but it seems like there might be another protocol operating behind the scenes of curl -x. Is there a way to successfully establish the proxy chain starting at ngrok and going through my localhost?

proxy http-proxy curl tinyproxy

1 Answers

  1. Your setup is accurate. All you need to do is run the following tcp command instead of http command:

    ngrok tcp 8888

    It will create a tcp tunnel and print something like this:

    tcp://something.ngrok.io:18673 -> localhost:8888

    You can then use it like this.

    curl -x something.ngrok.io:18673 http://www.google.com
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