sadcat

My ssh config is hell. Even if its not much, its hell. I have ~190 host entries which results in 1094(!) lines of sshconfig. Which I maintain manually. Man-u-a-ll-y!

Why is that?

I use a lot of aliases to remember all my hosts. Which is probably my fault but im used to it. A typical entry looked like

Host nyc-cexapsdrap21.company.com drap21 pdrap21
  Hostname nyc-cexapsdrap21.company.com
  User myuser
  Port 22
  IdentiyFile ~/.ssh/project_id_rsa

You can do a lot of stuff with wildcards in sshconfig. What you cant do is having dynamic aliases (at least what I know). This would require a templating like option.

And thats why i wrote this tiny script.

install & usage

as usual.

pip install sadcat
sadcat ~/.ssh/sadcat.toml

Personally i use two aliases

# set refresh alias
alias sshre="$SADCAT $HOME/.ssh/sadcat.toml > $HOME/.ssh/config"

# set edit alias
alias sshedit="$EDITOR $HOME/.ssh/sadcat.toml"

config

ranges

A minimal config would look like this.

[hosts]

[hosts.nyc-dpzzt]
hostname = "nyc-dpzzt[01-03]"

and sadcat generates 3 ssh entries for you called nyc-dpzzt01, nyc-dpzzt02 and nyc-dpzzt03. Simple.

templates

To save more lines you can apply a template to a hosts group

[hosts]

[hosts.twoleadingzeros]
hostname = "fra1024mfoo[001-005]"
template = "fra1024"

[templates]

[templates.fra1024]
user = "otheruser"
port = "2202"

Of course, setting a variable in hosts will always overwrite those being set in templates.

There is a special template that is applied to every host if its configured called "default". ([templates.default])

aliases

those can be specified in hosts using a toml array if multiple or a string. Range numbers (if available) will be applied at the end. Thats just how i like it. Theres no deeper meaning.

[hosts.hostsaliases]
hostname = "nyc-dpzzt[5-9]"
template = "company"
alias = [ "dypppt", "dzzzpt" ]

would result in

Host nyc-dpzzt5 dypppt5 dzzzpt5
  hostname ...

Host nyc-dpzzt6 dypppt6 dzzzpt6
  hostname ...

but as said, alias can also be just a string

[hosts.hostsaliases]
hostname = "nyc-dpzzt[5-9]"
alias = "dypppt"

single hosts

As you might expected, if you dont have a Range defined in a hostname this entry will result in one single host.

[hosts.singlehost]
hostname = "fra1024mfoo23"
user = "foo"

custom

If all that is still not enough flexibility, you can add custom snippets to your ssh config by defining multiline strings in the [custom] section with full hosts.

[custom]

hostsb = '''

Host bar.foo
  hostname bla
  user foo

Host foo.bar
  hostname foo
  user bar
  port par
'''

strangehost = '''

Host baz
  hostname baz
  port 666
  user evil
'''

For more detailed examples see conf.toml in this repo.

sadcat?

I used a project name generator and liked it.

noqqe / sadcat