Slightly less Random Ramblings

I wanted to have a SOCKS proxy on my home network, but I didn’t want to have to install new software. Fortunately, autossh can be used for that purpose without much trouble. Just add to your /etc/rc.local:
autossh -M 0 -N -C -g -l root -D :1080 localhost

after setting up ssh keys to allow root to log in as itself via localhost with no password. This will cause your server to listen on port 1080, and any SOCKS client on your home network can just point to it. After that, you can force all outbound traffic through that proxy if you wish, and limit the direct access to the Internet for internal machines.