Using only IPv6 works fine most of the time but in 2022 there are still some services that are available only through IPv4, like GitHub.

However, I have both IPv4 and IPv6 connectivity from the places I connect to my server. Could I use that to get IPv4 connectivity on the server when I need it?

The answer is yes of course, and here is one way to do just that.

Replace dedicated-server-hostname with your server hostname or IP.

  laptop> cat ~/.ssh/config
  Host dedicated-server-hostname
    RemoteForward 1080

  laptop> ssh username@dedicated-server-hostname

  server> cat ~/.gitconfig
  ...
  # Using git on an IPv6 only machine that needs to access git repos only
  # available through IPv4, e.g. github.com. The workaround is to use the
  # network on the machine we connect from.
  #
  # This can be done by setting up a SOCKS proxy when connecting to the IPv6 only
  # machine over ssh, see RemoteForward in ssh_config(5).
  [http "https://github.com"]
      proxy = socks5h://localhost:1080