> ssh -C -P -f -L 8181:localhost:8080 remotehost.com "sleep 365d" > > /dev/null 2>&1
OK this is basically the same thing I do. The only problem I can see with the above is, if you have to run this thing several times, you might get several orphaned "sleep 365d" processes on your remote machine. So instead of sleep, I use a command that kills any previous instance of itself before running. -chris