Install sshportal with Homebrew

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository

Commands and aliases

• sshportal

Project history

The project began publicly in 2017 in Manfred Touron's GitHub repository, with early releases following within weeks of the proof-of-concept commits. Its README frames the tool as a "transparent SSH bastion" with user invitations, host and key management, ACLs, audit logging, session recording, and support for common SSH workflows such as scp, rsync, sftp, port forwarding, and Git.

The author's project page and README emphasize operational access management: administrators can create invite accounts, users bind their own keys on first connection, and target hosts remain decoupled from end-user SSH keys.

Adoption history

Official project material describes use by educators, infrastructure teams, hosting operators, and security-focused contributors. The README specifically lists package availability in Homebrew and Nix through the supplied package metadata, placing sshportal in the package-manager niche of self-hosted bastion tooling rather than a hosted remote-access service.

How it is used

Common usage starts a local bastion server with `sshportal server`, then uses ordinary SSH clients to register users, create hosts, and connect through the portal. The project is meant to preserve normal SSH client behavior while centralizing access policy and logging.

Why package nerds care

Package maintainers care about sshportal because it is a single Go service binary for a familiar infrastructure pattern: jump-host access with an auditable local database. Its appeal is strongest for operators who prefer installing a small CLI/server tool from Homebrew or Nix over deploying a larger privileged-access platform.

Timeline

• 2017: First public proof-of-concept commits in the upstream repository.
• 2017: v1.0.0 tagged shortly after the initial implementation.
• 2018: README documented operational use cases, invite-based onboarding, and broad SSH compatibility.
• 2023: Later v1.19.x tags show continued maintenance of the original Go project.

Related projects

• sshportal sits near bastion-host and jump-server tools, and its README explicitly contrasts its transparent behavior with workflows that require per-user target host configuration.

Sources

• Git history from https://github.com/moul/sshportal
• https://github.com/moul/sshportal#readme
• https://v1.manfred.life/sshportal
• source_facts.package-manager