I am trying to do some fancy footwork to connect to a pol server from work using port forwarding. I ssh to a box at home and forward all local 8080 request to the port of the server. I open the forwarded ports for the public then I connect from my windows box to my linux box(just because getting UO to work on linux is a pain) I can open a connection to the pol server using razor and I can enter the shard but thats as far as it goes. I get an error message saying the client cannot attach to the server. What am I doing wrong?

I did this:

ssh user@my.box.at.home -L my.box.at.work:8080:my.local.uo.shard:3958 -g

then on my windows box I use razor and in the server details I put my.box.at.work and port 8080

But this leads me to the client that cannot attach error, any ideas?

Mmm did you try to put port 3958 in server details?
I'm just guessing, because I don't know inner workings of POL, but if you specify 8080 there, then POL will try to open a listen socket to port 8080, but you are redirecting *to* 3958 *from* 8080

no, I redirected all calls that is sent to my.box.at.work:8080 to my.local.uo.shard:3958

So If I connect to my.box.at.work, port 8080 it rather sends the data to my.local.uo.shard:3958 via ssh my.box.at.home

Yes, but for your POL server to open the port 3958 at my.local.uo.shard, you should put 3958 in servers, and not 8080, I think. Did you try?

I have a redirect trough a router, too, using port 2593 externally and 9999 internally, and I have 9999 in my servers.cfg.

Yeah, made it the same and it still doesnt work. made both sides 3958

Mmm... could it be a client/encryption mismatch with the server?
Client version are you using?

Its not the client, I use the same client from home and it works