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Zanna
Asked: 2016-08-10 07:04:20 +0800 CST

Why doesn't my alias work over ssh?

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I have an alias defined in my .bashrc

alias l.='ls -d .* --color=auto'

It's very useful :) but it doesn't work via ssh:

$ ssh localhost l.
bash: l.: command not found

Why is that?

bash

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Try:

    ssh localhost -t bash -ci l.

    Note:

    • The alias should be in ~/.bashrc on the remote server, not on your local machine.

    • The -i option tells bash to run an interactive shell. Aliases are enabled by default only in interactive shells.

    • The -t options tells ssh to allocate a pseudo-tty. Without this, bash emits a warning message when started in interactive mode. This also enables ls colors. Without it, you'd have to use --color=always, see man ls.

    • There is another way to enable aliases, without setting the interactive flag, namely shopt -s expand_aliases. So you could try:

      ssh localhost 'bash -c "shopt -s expand_aliases; l."'

      However:

      • Your .bashrc might only define aliases if the shell sourcing it is interactive. In this example, the shell would not be interactive at that time.

      • If you try to define aliases on the same line, see this.

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