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carpii
Asked: 2020-08-09 15:28:56 +0800 CST

How can I use different ssh keys for user1@host and user2@host, without resorting to aliased hostnames?

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I have a remote CentOS server, lets pretend it's called hostname.com

hostname.com has several user accounts, and I want to ssh into this server as any one of these users (using ssh keys rather than password).

It seems everyone recommends just changing my local ssh config, add an alias the server for each remote user, and then providing a different IdentityFile for each alias.

So then I have to ssh bob@aliased_hostname1 and ssh alice@aliased_hostname2

Are there any other solutions? Id rather not be ssh'ing into aliased hostnames

Ideally I want to just ssh [email protected] or ssh [email protected] and automatically choose the correct ssh keyfile, based on the remote username i'm trying to log in as.

linux centos ssh ssh-agent ssh-keys

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Check out the Match keyword in your SSH config on the client machine. Specifically, the user and host criteria. The ssh_config(5) man page states (emphasis mine):

    Match conditions are specified using one or more criteria or the single token all which always matches.

    So in your case you'd be looking at something like:

    Match user bob host "hostname.com"
  IdentityFile /path/to/bob.key

Match user alice host "hostname.com"
  IdentityFile /path/to/alice.key

    There's one SuperUser and one Unix & Linux Q/A that helped tie it all together, so you should probably go upvote those participants as well.

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