SSH forward a remote Docker daemon in a bash script

forward.sh

function ssh_forward_docker_daemon {
  # Create a temporary file and delete. We just want the filename.
  # Needed for the cleanup to identify which SSH process to kill
  SSH_SOCKET=$(mktemp)
  rm $SSH_SOCKET
  
  # Clean up on exit
  trap "exit" INT TERM
  trap "ssh -S $SSH_SOCKET -O exit $1" EXIT
  
  # Set up tunnel and return
  ssh -S $SSH_SOCKET -f -M -NL localhost:2377:/var/run/docker.sock root@$1
  
  # Configure Docker daemon to point at tunnel
  export DOCKER_HOST="tcp://localhost:2377"
}

ssh_forward_docker_daemon $HOST

Note: The SSH user (root in this example) needs to have permissions to access the Docker daemon. See here for how to set up another user: https://docs.docker.com/install/linux/linux-postinstall/