I am using Rasbian on my newly arrived Rasp.Pi, and decided to make it my own proxy server. Now I need to set up a ssh tunnel on the Pi to my Linode server, and make it auto start with the system. What did I do: Add this line to /etc/rc.local autossh -f theRemoteServer -N -D 5555 -L 1234:localhost:22 After I reboot, I found out that I can't use the localhost:5555 as a socks proxy. So I type the command ps -A | grep ssh then I can see the autossh and ssh all running: pi@raspberrypi ~ $ ps -A | grep ssh 2018 ? 00:00:00 sshd 2116 ? 00:00:00 autossh 2119 ? 00:00:00 sshd 2195 ? 00:00:00 sshd 3173 ? 00:00:00 ssh (I've installed autossh, and the command works if I type it manually.) (I use the passwordless key auth, so I don't have to enter password.) Much appreciated and sorry for my poor English.