Port forwarding to local port return ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED with aws ec2

I'm trying to do port forwarding to access my local machine port 8888 by using the public address of my aws ec2 machine. (xxxx.compute.amazonaws.com:8888)

I tried this :

ssh -R 8888:localhost:8888 [email protected]

I have no error messages, but it just doesnt work.

netstat -ant before ssh port forwarding :

Active Internet connections (servers and established)                                                                                                                                                                                         
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address           Foreign Address         State      
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.53:53           0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:22              0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN                                             
tcp        0      0 172.31.xxx.xxx:22        124.122.xxx.xxx:12902   ESTABLISHED                                        
tcp6       0      0 :::22                   :::*                    LISTEN

netstat -ant after ssh port forwarding :

Active Internet connections (servers and established)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address           Foreign Address         State      
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.53:53           0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:22              0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:8888          0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 172.31.xxx.xxx:22        209.141.xxx.xxx:53296    TIME_WAIT  
tcp        0    368 172.31.xxx.xxx:22        124.122.xxx.xxx:1095    ESTABLISHED
tcp6       0      0 :::22                   :::*                    LISTEN     
tcp6       0      0 ::1:8888                :::*                    LISTEN

But I keep having ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED in my browser. Even doing it on my simple apache2 server doesn't work : ssh -R 8888:localhost:80.

I also have these inbound rules on aws ec2 : 8888 TCP 0.0.0.0/0 and i even added 8888 TCP ::/0, 8888 UDP ::/0 and 8888 UDP 0.0.0.0/0 but same problem.

Solution 1:

The remote server is listening to 8888 on localhost only so you won't be able to connect to that from an external browser. That was also the case when I tried it - but I changed /etc/ssh/sshd_config on the EC2 to set GatewayPorts yes, restarted sshd, and it now works ok for me.