Tunnel to Production PostgreSQL Database
As any responsible sys admin, I only allow local connections to my production database server. This means that if I need to access my DB from my local machine I would most likely need to use an SSH tunnel in order to connect.
For some reason, pgadmin3 no longer seems happy on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and I am not able to make an SSH tunnel. In addition, it is a bit annoying that you are not able to save passwords with an SSH tunnel by default in pgadmin3, especially since my password is a long and random 50 character string.
The solution is pretty simple using the -L SSH flag.
ssh -L 15432:localhost:5432 $USER@$SERVER
This command creates a tunnel on my production server, and forwards port 5432 (the default PostgreSQL port) to my local port 15432. This allows me to connect using pgadmin3 as if the database were running on my local machine.
Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.
Check out some more stuff to read down below.
Most popular posts this month
- My Custom Miniflux CSS Theme
- 2025 Reading Log
- Vagrant Box for ROS2 on Apple Silicon
- Making cgit Pretty
- Setting up ANTLR4 on Windows
Recent Favorite Blog Posts
This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.
- Grow, Like a Tree Not a Cancer from Jim Nielsen’s Blog
- Pluralistic: All the books I reviewed in 2025 (02 Dec 2025) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- DEP-18: A proposal for Git-based collaboration in Debian from Optimized by Otto
- [RIDGELINE] No Phones in The Ten-don Shop from Craig Mod — Writer + Photographer
- My next chapter with Mastodon from Mastodon Blog
- How many pillars of observability can you fit on the head of a pin? from charity.wtf
- The Software Essays that Shaped Me from Refactoring English
- Give Your Spouse the Gift of a Couple's Email Domain from mtlynch.io
Articles from blogs I follow around the net
How good engineering unlocks fast scaling
You're building systems and tools to help companies grow without drowning in work. This fuels your equity, career capital, and reputation.
via swizec.com RSS Feed December 9, 2025Binance employee suspended after launching a token and promoting it with company accounts
Binance has announced that the company has suspended an employee who used the platform's official Twitter accounts to promote a memecoin they had launched. The token, called "year of the yellow fruit", pumped in price aft…
via Web3 is Going Just Great December 8, 2025Our Overfitted Century
Cultural stagnation is because we're stuck in-distribution
via The Intrinsic Perspective December 8, 2025Generated by openring