netns-proxy

A simple and slim proxy to forward ports from and into linux network namespaces.

Overview

netns-proxy is a plain and simple proxy for TCP, UDP and SCTP that allows to accept connections in one network namespace and forwards them into another.

This allows to expose ports that are only accessible in one namespace to a second one. This provides a lightweight alternative to connecting namespace with veth interfaces which require address management and firewall rules for forwarding.

netns-proxy does its job by opening a socket when it is started and switches to the target namespace before opening connections to the exposed server. This allows the accepting socket to exist in the original namespace while forwarded connection happen in the specified namespace.

Installation

You can install the latest released version directly from [crates.io]:

cargo install netns-proxy

How to Build

Prerequisites

• Rust toolchain (rustc ≥ 1.60, cargo)
• Linux with setns(2) support (kernel ≥ 3.0)
• (Optional) Nix if you prefer reproducible builds

From Source

# Clone the source
git clone https://github.com/fooker/netns-proxy.git
cd netns-proxy

cargo build --release

The binary will be in target/release/netns-proxy.

With nix

Requires nix.

# Clone the source
git clone https://github.com/fooker/netns-proxy.git
cd netns-proxy

nix-build

Usage

netns-proxy [OPTIONS] <netns> <target>

• <netns> is the name of the network namespace from which forwarded connections are created.
• <target> the target host and port to forward connections to.

See netns-proxy --help for full details and options.

Getting Help

Feel free to open an Issue or write me a Mail.

Contributing

:+1: Thanks for your help to improve the project! Pleas don't hesitate to create an Issue if you find something is off or even consider creating a patch and propose a Pull-Request.

License

The project is licensed under the MIT license.