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ssh
Matt Dodge
Matt Dodge

Reputation: 11142

Multiple SSH config files

I like the ability to specify hosts/identity files/etc in the ssh_config file. However, I would ideally like to have a couple different SSH configurations each under their own version control. Is there any way to reference another ssh_config type file from within ssh_config?

Something like this (the Load syntax is what I am looking for but can't find in the man pages.

~/.ssh/config 

Load config_file_a
Load config_file_b

~/.ssh/config_file_a

# Options for one host
Host serverA
    HostName serverA.myserver.com

~/.ssh/config_file_b

# Options for another host
Host serverB
    HostName serverB.myserver.com

Upvotes: 7

Views: 6839

Answers (2)

sumek
sumek

Reputation: 28172

Since OpenSSH v7.3 in 2016, you can use Include as per man ssh_config:

Include
             Include the specified configuration file(s).  Multiple
             pathnames may be specified and each pathname may contain
             glob(7) wildcards and, for user configurations, shell-like
             ‘~’ references to user home directories.  Wildcards will be
             expanded and processed in lexical order.  Files without
             absolute paths are assumed to be in ~/.ssh if included in a
             user configuration file or /etc/ssh if included from the
             system configuration file.  Include directive may appear
             inside a Match or Host block to perform conditional
             inclusion.

Upvotes: 10

ishaaq
ishaaq

Reputation: 6769

No way to do that that I know of. If you really need to do this I'd suggest scripting it - i.e. write a script like so (assuming bash script, but you could use whatever your OS supports):

cat /path/to/config1 /path/to/config2 .... /path/to/configN > ~/.ssh/config

Rerun your script whenever you make a change to any one of your config files. Better yet, if your version control system supports script-hooks, automate it.

Upvotes: 0

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