How to Dport proxy to work from home

Because of the gate, a simple -D alone doesn't work. Here is the magic formula:

dmb@percy:~$ ssh -v -o proxycommand="ssh gate proxy %h" \
  dbolser@login -D 23456

and that's that!

MySQL DB connection error (solved)

This error was driving me crazy:

1.20.2 installation : DB connection error: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (2) (localhost).
Check the host, username and password and try again

because everything was correct, and there was nothing in the Apache error_log.

Turns out it was a selinux issue. I was able to connect fine after disabling selinux.