Elegant OpenSSH configuration

HostName

One of the first annoyances people have–and one of the first things people try to fix–when using a command-line ssh client is having to type in long hostnames. For example, the Research Computing login service is available at login.rc.colorado.edu.

$ ssh login.rc.colorado.edu

This particular name isn’t too bad; but coupled with usernames and especially when used as part of an scp, these fully-qualified domain names can become cumbersome.

$ scp -r /path/to/src/ user1234@login.rc.colorado.edu:dest/

OpenSSH supports host aliases through pattern-matching in Host directives.

Host login*.rc
HostName %h.colorado.edu

Host *.rc
HostName %h.int.colorado.edu

In this example, %h is substituted with the name specified on the command-line. With a configuration like this in place, connections to login.rc are directed to the full name login.rc.colorado.edu.

$ scp -r /path/to/src/ user1234@login.rc:dest/

Failing that, other references to hosts with a .rc suffix are directed to the internal Research Computing domain. (We’ll use these later.)

(The .rc domain segment could be moved from the Host pattern to the HostName value; but leaving it in the alias helps to distinguish the Research Computing login nodes from other login nodes that you may have access to. You can use arbitrary aliases in the Host directive, too; but then the %h substitution isn’t useful: you have to enumerate each targeted host.)

User

Unless you happen to use the same username on your local workstation as you have on the remove server, you likely specify a username using either the @ syntax or -l argument to the ssh command.

$ ssh user1234@login.rc

As with specifying a fully-qualified domain name, tracking and specifying a different username for each remote host can become burdensome, especially during an scp operation. Record the correct username in your ~/.ssh/config file in stead.

Match host=*.rc.colorado.edu,*.rc.int.colorado.edu
User user1234

Now all connections to Research Computing hosts use the specified username by default, without it having to be specified on the command-line.

$ scp -r /path/to/src/ login.rc:dest/

Note that we’re using a Match directive here, rather than a Host directive. The host= argument to Match matches against the derived hostname, so it reflects the real hostname as determined using the previous Host directives. (Make sure the correct HostName is established earlier in the configuration, though.)

ControlMaster

Even if the actual command is simple to type, authenticating to the host may be require manual intervention. The Research Computing login nodes, for example, require two-factor authentication using a password or pin coupled with a one-time VASCO password or Duo credential. If you want to open multiple connections–or, again, copy files using scp–having to authenticate with multiple factors quickly becomes tedious. (Even having to type in a password at all may be unnecessary; but we’ll assume, as is the case with the Research Computing login example, that you can’t use public-key authentication.)

OpenSSH supports sharing a single network connection for multiple ssh sessions.

Match host=login.rc.colorado.edu
ControlMaster auto
ControlPath ~/.ssh/.socket_%h_%p_%r
ControlPersist 4h

With ControlMaster and ControlPath defined, the first ssh connection authenticates and establishes a session normally; but future connections join the active connection, bypassing the need to re-authenticate. The optional ControlPersist option causes this connection to remain active for a period of time even after the last session has been closed.

$ ssh login.rc
user1234@login.rc.colorado.edu's password:
[user1234@login01 ~]$ logout

$ ssh login.rc
[user1234@login01 ~]$

(Note that many arguments to the ssh command are effectively ignored after the initial connection is established. Notably, if X11 was not forwarded with -X or -Y during the first session, you cannot use the shared connection to forward X11 in a later session. In this case, use the -S none argument to ssh to ignore the existing connection and explicitly establish a new connection.)

ProxyCommand

But what if you want to get to a host that isn’t directly available from your local workstation? The hosts in the rc.int.colorado.edu domain referenced above may be accessible from a local network connection; but if you are connecting from elsewhere on the Internet, you won’t be able to access them directly.

Except that OpenSSH provides the ProxyCommand option which, when coupled with the OpenSSH client presumed to be available on the intermediate server, supports arbitrary proxy connections through to remotely-accessible servers.

Match host=*.rc.int.colorado.edu
ProxyCommand ssh -W %h:%p login.rc.colorado.edu

Even though you can’t connect directly to Janus compute nodes from the Internet, for example, you can connect to them from a Research Computing login node; so this ProxyCommand configuration allows transparent access to hosts in the internal Research Computing domain.

$ ssh janus-compile1.rc
[user1234@janus-compile1 ~]$

And it even works with scp.

$ echo 'Hello, world!' >/tmp/hello.txt
$ scp /tmp/hello.txt janus-compile1.rc:/tmp
hello.txt                                     100%   14     0.0KB/s   00:00

$ ssh janus-compile1.rc cat /tmp/hello.txt
Hello, world!

Public-key authentication

If you tried the example above, chances are that you were met with an unexpected password prompt that didn’t accept any password that you used. That’s because most internal Research Computing hosts don’t actually support interactive authentication, two-factor or otherwise. Connections from a CURC login node are authorized by the login node; but a proxied connection must authenticate from your local client.

The best way to authenticate your local workstation to an internal CURC host is using public-key authentication.

If you don’t already have an SSH key, generate one now.

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 # if you don't already have a key

Now we have to copy the (new?) public key to the remote CURC ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file. RC provides a global home directory, so copying to any login node will do. Targeting a specific login node is useful, though: the ControlMaster configuration for login.rc.colorado.edu tends to confuse ssh-copy-id.

$ ssh-copy-id login01.rc

(The ssh-copy-id command doesn’t come with OS X, but theres a third-party port available on GitHub. It’s usually available on a Linux system, too. Alternatively, you can just edit ~/.ssh/authorized_keys manually.)