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I have a local unix socket tunneled to another unix socket on a remote instance over SSH:

ssh -N -L $HOME/my.sock:/var/run/another.sock

however, when I terminate ssh gracefully (i.e. ctrl+C or SIGTERM), the $HOME/my.sock remains. It looks like this is not cleaned up properly. Is there an option/flag for this?

This is problematic because if I run the command for the second time, it fails due to existing socket file. (I can't see a "reuse" flag/option either that’ll overwrite the existing socket file.) And I much rather don’t add a rm -f $HOME/my.sock.

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Short answer, you can control this with a command line flag: -o 'StreamLocalBindUnlink=yes'

Long answer: See ssh_config(5):

 StreamLocalBindUnlink
         Specifies whether to remove an existing Unix-domain socket file for local or
         remote port forwarding before creating a new one.  If the socket file already
         exists and StreamLocalBindUnlink is not enabled, ssh will be unable to forward
         the port to the Unix-domain socket file.  This option is only used for port for‐
         warding to a Unix-domain socket file.

         The argument must be yes or no (the default).
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    Not had a chance to try it, but you might need to check whether the remote end needs the same configuration (but in sshd_config).
    – Will Crawford
    Commented Jan 2, 2018 at 21:21
  • No, the remote doesn't need the same config. This is good enough, although it doesn’t clean up the socket upon terminating ssh client, which would be really nice too.
    – ahmet alp balkan
    Commented Jan 3, 2018 at 19:53
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    In my case too, the server sshd_config does need the same config set.
    – huyz
    Commented Jan 15, 2023 at 15:35
  • 3
    I think I figured it out. If you do remote forwarding (-R), you need it on the server, while the ssh_config setting affects local forwarding.
    – andsens
    Commented Jul 12, 2023 at 8:10

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