Ssh shorthand name for hostnames

How to use shorthand names for hostnames with ssh? You don’t always want to type in a complete host name when using ssh to remote hosts. Here is how to configure and use shorthand hostnames with ssh.

How to use shorthand names for hostnames with ssh? You don’t always want to type in a complete host name when using ssh to remote hosts. Here is how to configure and use shorthand hostnames with ssh.

Configure shortened names for hosts for use with ssh

If you want to configure shortened names for your servers & hosts for use with SSH, follow the next steps:

Open up your .ssh/config file:

vi ~/.ssh/config

and add the following:

Host your_short_name
HostName server.on.the.web
User user_to_user

Save the file and exit (:wq).

Now you can use ‘ssh your_short_name‘ instead of: ssh -l username this-is-my-long-hostname.example.com.

Pretty neat, right?! :-)

want to manually install OpenSSH in Windows Server? Or Tunnel RDP through ssh?

4 thoughts on “Ssh shorthand name for hostnames”

  1. This does not seem to work if the long form hostname relies of further configuration entries (with wildcards). e.g.:

    Host short
    HostName my.long.name

    Host *.name
    User myspecialusername

    Reply

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