local-ssh-config

Ian Cleary (iancleary)

Description

Welcome! This is a CLI to generate/update SSH config files for your local virtual machines quickly.

Problem

Windows doesn't maintain a static IP Address of Hyper-V Virtual Machines across reboots. When using multipass with a Hyper-V backend, this applies as well for multipass.

This leads to ssh configuration, which is by ip address, to be stale every reboot.

Solution

This script updates my ssh config file for me

• get IP address from PowerShell for hyper-v by name according to source ('hyper-v' directly, or 'multipass list')
• write template config files to the ~/.ssh/config.d/ directory according to your ~/.config/local-ssh-config/settings.json file.

This assumes you have:

• a ~/.ssh/config.d/ folder
• Include config.d/* in your ~/.ssh/config
• For Hyper-V Virtual Machines
  • PowerShell installed
  • Hyper-V enabled and The Hyper-V Manager Installed

Hyper-V Manager IP Address

I currently use Ubuntu Servers, if you do too, please install several apt packages in the Virtual Machine (so that Hyper-V can report the IP Address)

🚨🚨 Hyper-V will not report the ip address until you do the above 🚨🚨

Multipass or Virtual Box may report the IP address of an Ubuntu Guest. I'm not currently sure if it's a Hyper-V limitation or a Windows limitation.

As this tool only currently supports Hyper-V, please consider this a warning of the required step.

Quickstart

❯ pipx install local-ssh-config --user
❯ local-ssh-config --help

That will output the following:

Usage: local_ssh_config [OPTIONS]

  Creates an `~/.ssh/config.d/` directory, 
  checks to see if you include all files in that directory,
  and then creates config files for each virtual machine specified
  in your `~/.config/vm-ip-ssh-config/settings.json` file.

  See https://github.com/iancleary/local-ssh-config/ for more information.

Arguments:
  None

Options:
  -f, --file TEXT       The JSON file containing the virtual machine
                        configuration  [default: C:\Users\username\.config\vm-
                        ip-ssh-config\settings.json]
  -v, --version         Show the application's version and exit.
  --install-completion  Install completion for the current shell.
  --show-completion     Show completion for the current shell, to copy it or
                        customize the installation.
  --help                Show this message and exit.

Example Usage

The first and only argument is the name of the component to create.

$ local-ssh-config
{'host': 'test.local', 'hostname': '0.0.0.0', 'user': 'test', 'identity_file': '~/.ssh/example_id_ed25519'}
{'host': 'ubuntu.local', 'hostname': {'source': 'hyper-v', 'physical_address': '00-15-5d-95-fb-09'}, 'user': 'icleary', 'identity_file': '~/.ssh/github_id_rsa_ed25519'}
Hyper-V: Powershell (arp -a): Interface command executed successfully!
-------------------------
{'host': 'dev1.multipass.local', 'hostname': {'source': 'multipass', 'name': 'dev1'}, 'user': 'ubuntu'}
Multipass-V: Powershell (multipass list): Interface command executed successfully!
-------------------------

✨ Creating ~/.ssh/config.d/ files
✅ C:\Users\icleary\.ssh\config.d\test.local
✅ C:\Users\icleary\.ssh\config.d\ubuntu.local
✅ C:\Users\icleary\.ssh\config.d\dev1.multipass.local
SSH config updated! 🚀 ✨!

Thank you for using local-ssh-config.

The path printed is the absolute path to the updated config files.

This uses a directory ~/.ssh/config.d/ to allow for a single file per Host, to allow cleaner version tracking within a dotfile manager. See Include config.d/* in your ~/.ssh/config for the include syntax WINDOWS_MULTIPASS_DEFAULT_ID_RSA = "%PROGRAMDATA%/Multipass/data/ssh-keys/id_rsa"

Configuration

Configuration can be done through 2 different ways:

• Creating a global settings.json in your home directory (~/.config/local-ssh-config/settings.json).
• Creating a local .local-ssh-config-config.json in your project's root directory and including the path to that file with the --f or -f optionanl command-line argument.

The optional command line value takes precendence global settings file being the default.

API Reference

File

Controls the settings.json to load. Defaults to ~/.config/local-ssh-config/settings.json

Usage:

Command line: --file <value> or -f <value>

JSON config:

Example with single host, as dictionary

{
    "host": "ubuntu.local",
    "hostname": {
        "source": "hyper-v",
        "physical_address": "00-15-5d-95-fb-09"
    },
    "user": "icleary",
    "identity_file": "~/.ssh/github_id_rsa_ed25519"
}

Example with single host, as list:

[
  {
      "host": "ubuntu.local",
      "hostname": {
          "source": "hyper-v",
          "physical_address": "00-15-5d-95-fb-09"
      },
      "user": "icleary",
      "identity_file": "~/.ssh/github_id_rsa_ed25519"
  }
]

A single dictionary is converted to a list of hosts before looping through the files, so either structure is valid (your preference).

Example with multiple hosts:

[
    {
        "host": "test.local",
        "hostname": "0.0.0.0",
        "user": "test",
        "identity_file": "~/.ssh/example_id_ed25519"
    },
    {
        "host": "ubuntu.local",
        "hostname": {
            "source": "hyper-v",
            "physical_address": "00-15-5d-95-fb-09"
        },
        "user": "icleary",
        "identity_file": "~/.ssh/github_id_rsa_ed25519"
    },
    {
        "host": "dev1.multipass.local",
        "hostname": {
            "source": "multipass",
            "name": "dev1"
        },
        "user": "ubuntu"
    }
]

Further information

I will likely evolve this CLI as I learn more; I'm on my way 😊

Enjoy quickly updating your ssh configurations 🚀!

Contributing

I created this CLI for my opinionated uses and may not accept changes. That said, I made this to solve a problem, and if you have the same problem, I hope it helps you! 😊

See CONTRIBUTING.md.