Alias Entry in /etc/passwd file

Question

On my desktop machine, my account is david, but on my servers it's dweintra. This means whenever I use scp I have to do this:

$ scp some.file dweintra@app05:

and

$ ssh dweinta@app05

I'd like to be able to simply do this:

$ scp some.file app05:
$ ssh app05

That is, somehow create an davidalias user name to my actual dweintra user name. I figure i could do this by putting an entry in the /etc/passwd file that matches the dweintra entry except of course for the first field of the line.

The dweintra is actually in NIS and not directly in /etc/passwd. Would there any problems doing this?

I'm just hoping to cut down on a few keystrokes and the few brief milliseconds it takes for me to pull what my user name is on the server.

Alex Holst · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-23T18:49:35.050

8

Tell your ssh client which username to use when connecting to remote hosts. Put this in .ssh/config on your workstation:

Host *
User dweinta

I recommend you read all of the man page for ssh_config while you're at it.

edited Apr 23 '12 at 18:49

answered Apr 20 '12 at 20:04

Alex Holst

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On the Mac, it's `User` and not `Username`. Probably a BSD vs. Linux thing. – David W. Apr 23 '12 at 16:45
Nope, that was just me remembering wrong. Fixed. – Alex Holst Apr 23 '12 at 18:51

Alias Entry in /etc/passwd file

1 Answers1