danrabinowitz / sshrc

bring your .bashrc, .vimrc, etc. with you when you ssh

Installation

Ubuntu (12.04 and 14.04 only):

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:russell-s-stewart/ppa
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install sshrc

Everything else:

$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Russell91/sshrc/master/sshrc $ chmod +x sshrc $ sudo mv sshrc /usr/local/bin #or anywhere else on your PATH

Usage

sshrc works just like ssh, but it also sources the ~/.sshrc on your local computer after logging in remotely.

$ echo "echo welcome" > ~/.sshrc
$ sshrc me@myserver
welcome

$ echo "alias ..='cd ..'" > ~/.sshrc
$ sshrc me@myserver
$ type ..
.. is aliased to `cd ..'

You can use this to set environment variables, define functions, and run post-login commands. It's that simple, and it won't impact other users on the server - even if they use sshrc too. This makes sshrc very useful if you share a server with multiple users and can't edit the server's ~/.bashrc without affecting them, or if you have several servers that you don't want to configure independently. For more advanced configuration, continue reading.

Advanced configuration

Your most import configuration files (e.g. vim, inputrc) may not be bash scripts. Put them in ~/.sshrc.d and sshrc will copy them to a (guaranteed) unique folder in the /tmp directory after login. You can find them on the sever at $SSHHOME/.sshrc.d

Once the config files are on the server, you can usually tell programs to load their configuration from the $SSHHOME/.sshrc.d directory by setting the right environment variables. For example, vim uses the VIM environment variable.

$ mkdir -p ~/.sshrc.d
$ echo ':imap <special> jk <Esc>' > ~/.sshrc.d/vimrc
$ echo 'VIM=$SSHHOME/.sshrc.d' > ~/.sshrc
$ sshrc me@myserver
$ vim # jk -> normal mode will work

Putting too much data in ~/.sshrc.d will slow down your login times. If the folder contents are > 1MB, the server may start blocking your sshrc attempts.

If you use tmux frequently, you can make sshrc work there as well.

$ echo 'SHELL=$SSHHOME/bashsshrc
  alias tmux="tmux -S /tmp/russelltmuxserver"
  alias foo="echo I work with tmux, too"' > ~/.sshrc
$ sshrc me@myserver
$ tmuxrussell
$ foo
I work with tmux, too

After the SHELL variable is set, any new tmux server will load your configurations. The -S option will start a separate tmux server at /tmp/russelltmuxserver. Don't try to access the vanilla tmux server when your SHELL environment variable is set: if the server isn't already running, other users will get your configurations with their own sessions.