Question: I would like to connect to my node server running in debug mode on AWS (node --debug app.js) from my development machine, and be able to debug my app remotely.

Two questions:

* Can I do this with node-inspector? I wish I could, but node-inspector fails to install on my AWS instance.
* Any alternatives that will allow me to do this?

Answer: 
Forward remote debugger port with ssh from your dev machine

```
ssh -L 5858:127.0.0.1:5858 ubuntu@some.ec2.host.com

```

And now you can start `node-inspector` as if the debugger is running locally.
This is what worked for me:

1. Start node-inspector on server.
2. Start debugee on remote server with `--debug` flag.
3. Note the port that the debugger listens on, i.e. `Debugger listening on port DEBUG_PORT` message.
4. Create an ssh tunnel for port `8080`, not the `DEBUG_PORT` as Andrey Sidorov's answer suggests.
5. Open `SERVER_API:8080/debug?ws=127.0.0.1:8080&port=DEBUG_PORT` in browser an voilà.

Node Inspector v0.10.1