SSH config wildcard on expanded Hostname

ssh

I want to have a wildcard in my SSH config to set my default username to a particular value for all hosts on a certain domain. But I also want to have some short names for some particular hosts. I expected something like this to work:

Host *.mydomain.com
    User myusername
Host host1
    Hostname host1.mydomain.com

With those settings, if I type ssh host1.mydomain.com it evaluates to myusername@host1.mydomain.com, but if I type ssh host1 it doesn't apply my User setting and I instead see mylocalusername@host1.mydomain.com.

Is there a way to have the wildcards match on the final expanded hostname so I can type the short or long form and get the same results?

Best Answer

Simply use:

Host *.mydomain.com host1
User myusername

Host host1
Hostname host1.mydomain.com

Alternative patterns are supplied by a delimiting blank in a Host line.
All matching Host Patterns are applied.
If an option occurs multiple times, only the 1st occurance is used

Related Solutions

What’s the difference between Host and HostName in SSH Config

For github.com your ~/.ssh/config might look like this

Host github.com
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/key_name_for_github

For hostname: as man says it allows you to specify abbreviation for host. For example, if your ~/.ssh/config look like this

Host host1
    HostName host1.example.com
Host host2
    HostName anotherdomain.com

Then when you type

ssh host1 you actually login to host1.example.com
ssh host2 login to anotherdomain.com

Windows – MinGW MSYS ssh error: Could not create directory ‘/home//.ssh’

After some trial and error, I have found the solution(s) to the problem.

Automated solution (for the hasty)

Go to (your-MinGW-installation-directory)\msys\1.0.
(in my case, which is also the default, that would be C:\MinGW\msys\1.0).
Run msys.bat.

This will start the MinGW Shell, which will create the path
(your-MinGW-installation-directory)\msys\1.0\home\(your-username)
automatically and ssh should now work just fine.

Manual solution (basically create the path required by hand):

Go to (your-MinGW-installation-directory)\msys\1.0.
Create a home directory.
Inside the home directory create a directory with the same name as your username.

So, now the path
(your-MinGW-installation-directory)\msys\1.0\home\(your-username)
is available and ssh should work just fine.

Here is what you should get if everything went well:

C:\Users\myusername>ssh username@host
The authenticity of host 'host (host-ip)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is fingerprint.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Permanently added 'host,host-ip' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.

Note
Since the MinGW Shell could create the path needed (without Windows UAC nagging about a thing), I guess this has nothing to do with persmissions. It is probably an omission of the MinGW installation.