ZenLinux Blog

I feel the need to spread this ssh tip that saves me from quite a bit of typing on a daily basis. I learned about it from Elliott’s OS X Tips and Tricks post on the Carsonified blog.

Add the following to your ~/.ssh/config file:

Host *
ControlMaster auto
ControlPath ~/.ssh/master-%r@%h:%p

Now when you ssh into a host, subsequent connections to that host use the same TCP socket, and don’t require authentication. This will be the case for as long as that initial connection stays open, and it works for sftp as well as ssh.

I realize another way of avoiding typing your password all the time is to use ssh keys, but I happen to work on embedded systems that get rebuilt very frequently and which I’m not able set up an ssh key as part of the build process. This technique allows me to log into the system once per session and not have to type the password over and over again.