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socat lets you proxy basically any 2 things

Diagram of a star, a heart, and the word “socat”. There are arrows going to and from socat to the heart and star.

the basic syntax: socat THING1 THING2

socat supports:

  • tcp sockets
  • unix domain sockets
  • pipes
  • SSL sockets
  • files
  • processes
  • UDP sockets
  • … and MORE!

order doesn’t matter

socat THING1 THING2
is the same as
socat THING2 THING1

expose a unix domain socket on port 1337

socat TCP-LISTEN:1337
      UNIX-CONNECT:/path

proxy from local HTTP port to remote server

socat TCP-LISTEN:1337
      TCP:domain.com:80

-v

write all transferred data to stderr

happy little stick figure: useful for debugging!

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