A few tips and tricks about sshing.
Whatever network I’m working in I have found it’s common to have a central linux server that I ssh into and then I can jump off of that to any of the devices in the network. The reason for this is that it makes securing the network a lot easier when your VTY ACL consists of one IP even though you have many admins. There’s also a trail of who was logged into what when. But by far my favorite reason for having a central server to jump off of is because I can greatly improve my performance because I can use the power of linux to make my life easier.
If you haven’t guessed by now, this post is very linux centric keeping in mind accessing networking devices like Cisco routers.
Aliases in .bashrc
Open up your .bashrc file (use vi or pico or something). Here is an example of what mine looks like:
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I like to think smarter whenever I can. By making s the alias for ssh it cuts down the amount of characters typed by 66%! So now whenver I need to ssh into a device I simply use s like so:
s 192.168.1.1
Also often I am finding myself using the same username like cisco for many things. If I know the username is cisco before trying to ssh to the device I now have a shortcut for that. To ssh into a system using that username I simply do:
sc 192.168.1.1
Editing your .ssh/config file
By default your ssh username will be whatever you logged into linux with. So how do you change the default ssh username? That’s simple. It’s in the .ssh/config file.
Edit the file:
vi .ssh/config
Add the lines:
Host *
User myname.acs
Now change permissions of the file:
chmod 600 .ssh/config
Now simply try to ssh into any device and you’ll see the username has changed to myname.acs by default.
Changing the username for a specific device or subnet
Let’s say you have a bunch of devices in the 192.168.5.x network that all authenticate to the same username ‘bob.acs’. It’s possible to configure ssh to lookup the place you’re trying to go and tack on a username before trying to ssh. Here’s how.
Go back into editing the file:
vi .ssh/config
Add the following lines at the top of the file:
Host 192.168.5.*
User newusername
Now you’ve just changed the default username for just devices starting with 192.168.5.x. This can also work for hostnames too.
Use keys to login instead of a password
If you’re trying to ssh from one linux machine to another it’s possible to use keys for authentication instead of a password. Follow this guide to ssh without password.
Port-forwarding and Tunneling
You can also do port-fowarding and tunneling with ssh.
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