SSH equivalent of .profile/.bashrc

bashssh

I am looking for a way to automatically define some aliases inside my session on any server I ssh to. I can't put them in the .bashrc files on the server because the user accounts I log in with are shared by other people and besides there are dozens of them and maintaining a script on every machine would be painful. I know I could use expect to type the aliases automatically but I was just wondering if OpenSSH has anything built-in that could conceivably be used to achieve this?

Best Answer

There's nothing wrong with doing it in expect. The other way that I've done it is pretty dirty too, with a script, first scp the profile you want to run, then ssh in, run it and stay connected.

So, place all the profile settings in a local file .<local username>-<hostname>-init.sh, and run the script below to log in to the remote host.

#!/bin/sh
[ $# -eq 0 ] && { echo "syntax: $0 <host> [<ssh-option>...]" 1>&2 ; exit 1 ; }
host=$1 ; shift    # use any remaining args as ssh options
initfile=".$USER-`hostname`-init.sh"
scp -q ~/.ssh-init.sh "$host:/var/tmp/$initfile"
ssh -t "$@" $host "bash --rcfile /var/tmp/$initfile"

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You want to use expect for this. It's probably already on your machine. It's the standard tool for any kind of interactive command-line automation. It's a Tcl library, so you'll get some Tcl skills along the way for free. Beware; it's addictive.

#!/path/to/expect
spawn ssh user@example.com "mysql -u blub"
expect "*ssword:*"
send -- "mypass\r"
interact

Ssh – How to automate SSH login with password

Don't use a password. Generate a passphrase-less SSH key and push it to your VM.

If you already have an SSH key, you can skip this step… Just hit Enter for the key and both passphrases:

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/username/.ssh/id_rsa):
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in /home/username/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /home/username/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.

Copy your keys to the target server:

$ ssh-copy-id id@server
id@server's password:

Now try logging into the machine, with ssh 'id@server', and check-in:

.ssh/authorized_keys

Note: If you don't have .ssh dir and authorized_keys file, you need to create it first

to make sure we haven’t added extra keys that you weren’t expecting.

Finally, check to log in…

$ ssh id@server

id@server:~$

You may also want to look into using ssh-agent if you want to try keeping your keys protected with a passphrase.

Best Answer

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Related Topic

Ssh – Bash-like command substitution in ssh or How to request things from ssh client