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    Thanks, this was the issue for me. I created the host name for the IP locally but not on the remote ssh server. Commented Apr 20, 2016 at 12:29
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    "the target hostname of your tunnel " is a bit hard to decipher. Can you give a concrete workable example that would allow me to take your example and replace the "target hostname" in your example with my target hostname (once I understand what you mean by that) and have this work? Commented May 12, 2017 at 10:42
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    I'm not even sure your comment makes sense. You say that the remote machine had no entry for localhost. But then say that the remote host must resolve the target hostname not the local hostname. Again a complete concrete example of the situation before and after would be helpful. Commented May 12, 2017 at 10:44
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    @TerrenceBrannon in the command above, "localhost" is the target hostname of the tunnel. When creating an SSH tunnel, the ssh command first logs into the remote system (user@remote), then from the remote end, it sets up tunnels to the target hosts listed (in the above command this is localhost). When doing this, it uses the hostname resolution scheme on the remote host. So if the machine you SSH'd into cannot resolve localhost, you'll get this error message. Commented Aug 16, 2017 at 5:30
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    In my case, it was as simple as having mistyped the target hostname, so of course it didn't resolve, but my eyes missed seeing the typo for far too long. Commented Mar 24, 2018 at 19:19