enable loopback connections

Hi folks, hopefully someone will be able to help.

At work I run on Windows XP, I'm able to connect to my home network through SSH and onto another Windows box with remote desktop.

From that Windows box I'm then able to use VNC to remote desktop to my Mac

However, I'd rather just connect from my work PC to the Mac. I added some port forwarding rules on the router and also some tunnel rules for SSH but when I try to connect using VNC I get "Sorry, loopback connections are not enabled".

How can I enable loopback connections and will that solve my problem?

Thanks in advance,
Steven

If you are forwarding 22 on your home router to the Mac use SSHTunnelManager to create a tunnel sending 5901 to 5900 on your home's public IP. Then use VNC://127.0.0.1:5901 to connect to the remote Mac through the SSH Tunnel.

I have set my ssh daemon up listening on 443 however to avoid outbound firewall rules blocking 22 when I'm on public networks. 443 is usually open outbound everywhere.

yeah I've got Putty forwarding 5901 to 5900 and also using 443 for SSH for the reason you said. However, still getting "loopback not enabled".

There is no Putty for Mac. Why is Putty doing the 5901 to 5900?

I'm not connection from Mac to Mac.

I'm connecting from XP to Mac - hence I need an SSH client on Windows (Putty).

In order for the loopback to work the tunnel must be from Mac to Mac. Having the remote Mac ssh-ing to the XP SSH server does nothing for the remote Mac to tunnel in to the host Mac via a loopback, just the XP machine.

If your router supports port triggering enable remote management on the Mac and setup triggering on the router to pass traffic directly to the Mac to create the Mac to Mac tunnel with SSHTunnelManager on the remote Mac. Use whatever port you want, most likely 22 if you haven't change the listening daemon on the Mac. Then and only then will the loopback work.

The loopback can only forward local traffic if the tunnel is originating from itself.

I also got the "Sorry, loopback connections are not enabled" error messages when trying to tunnel using TightVnc. This happened right after I upgraded. I found a solution. Insteading of VNC's to 127.0.0.1, change the default port from 5900 to 5901, so in the tightVNC box you will type: localhost:1 (It didn't work when I just used localhost)

Of course you have to set up Putty as well to do the forwarding:
In putty, under ssh, and then under tunnels, add this:
source port: 5901, destination: my-remote-server-that-is-running-vnc-server.com:5900, and then start up putty and then log in.