Edgar

I take some times to write a new utility for my day to day work: Edgar.

edgar is a small utility to help one maintain their huge SSH config file. It's heavilly inspired by concierge (even the tests are directly taken from the concierge examples!).

Installation

edgar only support python3. We are now in 2019!

virtualenv edgar-venv
source edgar-venv/bin/activate
python setup.py install

Usage

Contrary to concierge, there is no inotify support. The main idea is that you are not always modifying your SSH config file and it's not that hard to just call manually edgar when your config template is ready.

edgar rely on a config file stored in your ~/.config folder: ~/.config/edgar.yml. As its name show it, this is a YAML file.

This file should contain a list of host configurations. Thus the most simple config file may be:

---
- Host: m1
  HostName: 192.168.1.42
  User: edgar
- Host: m2
  HostName: 192.168.1.43
  User: edgar

Which will output the following:

Host m1
  HostName 192.168.1.42
  User edgar

Host m2
  HostName 192.168.1.43
  User edgar

If the main object is not a list, it is taken as a primary host configuration named *:

---
Compression: yes
ServerAliveInterval: 120
ServerAliveCountMax: 2
UseRoaming: no
HashKnownHosts: yes
IdentitiesOnly: yes
AddKeysToAgent: yes

hosts:
- Host: m1
  HostName: 192.168.1.42
  User: edgar
- Host: m2
  HostName: 192.168.1.43
  User: edgar

Which will output the following:

Host *
  Compression yes
  ServerAliveInterval 120
  ServerAliveCountMax 2
  UseRoaming no
  HashKnownHosts yes
  IdentitiesOnly yes
  AddKeysToAgent yes

Host m1
  HostName 192.168.1.42
  User edgar
Host m2
  HostName 192.168.1.43
  User edgar

Finally, edgar understands sub-hosts and ansible-like with_items processing:

---
Compression: yes
ServerAliveInterval: 120
ServerAliveCountMax: 2
UseRoaming: no
HashKnownHosts: yes
IdentitiesOnly: yes
AddKeysToAgent: yes

hosts:
- Host: m
  User: edgar
  Protocol: 2
  hide: yes
  hosts:
  - Host: e{item}
    HostName: 10.10.0.{item}
    ViaProxy: gw2
    with_items: range(2)
- Host: blog
  User: sa

Which will output the following:

Host *
  Compression yes
  ServerAliveInterval 120
  ServerAliveCountMax 2
  UseRoaming no
  HashKnownHosts yes
  IdentitiesOnly yes
  AddKeysToAgent yes

Host me0
  User edgar
  Protocol 2
  HostName 10.10.0.0
  ProxyCommand ssh -W %h:%p gw2

Host me1
  User edgar
  Protocol 2
  HostName 10.10.0.1
  ProxyCommand ssh -W %h:%p gw2

Host blog
  User sa

Reference

edgar understands all SSH config parameter, only if they are well written (there is no attempt to add missing capital).

It understands the following supplementary commands:

hosts
define a sub-host listing, each of them will inherit from the current host parameters. Value must be a list of hosts configurations.
hide
don't create a specific host configuration for the current host, only use it for factorization purpose of its sub-hosts. Value must be a boolean. Default is no (false).
prefix
don't concatenate the current host name with it's potential sub-hosts name. Value must be a boolean. Default is yes (true).
with_items
define that the current host configuration must be duplicated for each item of this list. Value must be something python is able to iterate over (a list, a range expression…). You can use the {item} tag in the Host and Hostname as you wish.
ViaProxy <host>
shortcut helper, which expands to ProxyCommand ssh -W %h:%p <host>.

FAQ

  • Edgar crash with a weird error message about YAML parser
    1. Don't forget to add the colon between the SSH parameter and its value.
    2. Some values must be protected, like the one with *. For exemple: Host: "*.toto.com".

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