fzf + SSH Config Hosts

SSH has a nice feature in which you can store aliases for frequently accessed hosts.

Combining this with fzf, you can have a nice quick shortcut to quickly pick a server to connect to into.

This comes in very handy if you need to ssh into different servers and forget their IP or hostname often.

Here’s a sample ssh config file (normally located at ~/.ssh/config):

# see https://man.openbsd.org/ssh_config.5 for all the available configuration settings
Host runner-staging
    HostName 10.0.0.8
    User alpha

Host runner-production
    HostName 10.0.0.9
    User beta

Host mainframe
    HostName mainframe.computer.world
    User hackerman

Here’s a small shell function which calls fzf with the hostnames configured and allows you to pick one to connect to:

s () {
  local server
  server=$(grep -E '^Host ' ~/.ssh/config | awk '{print $2}' | fzf)
  if [[ -n $server ]]; then
    ssh $server
  fi
}

Add this function to your .bashrc (or .zshrc, or whichever config file for your shell) and reload the configuration.

Now, you can quickly ssh into mainframe by typing s:

$ s

# fzf will allow to quickly search and pick your server
> runner-staging
  runner-production
  mainframe
  3/3 ──────────

# press enter and you will be connected!
[[e-mail] ~]$ 

Comments

[dserv-nh]

Your snippet contains a syntax error. The fourth line should be
if [[ -n $server ]]; then

[Andrés Villarreal]

Thank you so much for the correction. Somehow dev.to messed it up when I imported this post from my blog.

[Flávio Nunes]

Very good, this is great, especially when you have a lot of Hosts to manage!