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znx

Mar 22 2007, 11:37 PM

How many times have I seen people using SSH aliases to shorthand the long statements they need to type to login:

CODE

alias ssh-home="ssh -p 12345 znx@somelong.hostname.com"

Now whilst this eases the pain, you are missing some real magic that SSH and BASH can provide you! So lets get started:

Edit/Make the ~/.ssh/config

CODE

Host some
   HostKeyAlias somelong.hostname.com
   HostName somelong.hostname.com
   User znx
   Port 12345

Now what's that all about you say, well now the original long top line can be replaced with:

CODE

ssh some

MAGIC!

But that's not all, you can infact setup BASH to provide you with a tab completion on those new short hostnames!

Edit/Add to your ~/.bashrc

CODE

HOSTFILE=~/.hosts

function _ssh() {
  local cur
  cur=${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}
  if [ "${cur:0:1}" != "-" ]; then
    COMPREPLY=( $(awk '/^Host '$2'/{print $2}' $HOME/.ssh/config) )
  fi
  return 0
}

complete -F _ssh ssh sftp scp
complete -A hostname ssh sftp scp

Edit/Add to a ~/.hosts

CODE

192.168.1.2 some.long.host hostname
192.168.1.3 other.long.host host

To update the current shell you are running do:

CODE

source ~/.bashrc

Now here is the magic:

CODE

ssh s<TAB BUTTON>

At which point you will be given the option of "some" or "some.long.host". Better than all that is this, when you edit your ~/.ssh/config or your ~/.hosts to update or add a new host, it is INSTANTLY in your tab complete.

Weeeeee!

CODE

ssh home
ssh work
ssh somefriend
ssh here
ssh there

Love Linux

xDamox

Mar 23 2007, 09:13 AM

Nice tip/trick

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