sshclick 0.4.4

SSH Config manager

SSH Click Config manager (sshclick)

Check this page on GitHub

Links

• Intro
• Why?
• What does it do
  • Installation procedure
  • Upgrade procedure
  • Uninstall procedure
• SSH Config structure
  • Comment blocks and metadata
• Example usage and features
  • Group commands and options
  • Host commands and options
  • Output styling and user ENV variables
• Recorded demos
  • sshc group operations
  • sshc host operations
• Author
• License

Intro

Terminal based assisted management of your SSH config files.
Built out of boredom with managing messy and huge ssh_config files.

EARLY VERSION, backup your SSH config files before using!
SSHClick can be used with "show" and "list" commands for hosts, without modifying your SSH Config!

Only commands that modify configuration will edit and rewrite/restructure your SSH Config file. In that case, any added comment or infos that are not in form that SSHClick understand will be discarded, and configuration will be re-formatted to match SSHClick style. See below details to understand how SSH Click would keep your config organized

Why?

What am I trying to solve with this tool?

• I need something that works fast and great in terminal, and does not require complex setup.
• Managing some other configuration files that renders to SSH config is extra step that I don't like.
• SSH config is already feature-full with all options SSH client support, why inventing extra layer?
• SSH config is the only config I need to backup.
• I need quick way to search, group and visualize all hosts inside SSH configuration (especially since it can grow huge)

What does it do?

SSHClick (sshc) is just a tool designed to work with existing SSH configuration files on your Linux/Windows/WSL terminal environment.
It basically parses your SSH config, and can provide easy commands to list, filter, modify or view specific Host entries. Trough additional "magic" comments it can add abstractions such as "groups" and various information that is both readable in the configuration file, and can be parsed and printed while using the tool.

Installation procedure

Should be straight forward...

1. Check preconditions:

   • Currently only tested on Linux (Debian 10,11, Ubuntu 20.04,22.04), but should work on other systems as well
   • Minimum python3.7 (tested up to 3.11 beta) & pip installed
     • it is preferable to not use system python version, to install "custom" user python on linux, you can try using pyenv (https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv
   • git installed

2. Install package:

   • from PyPI using pip

     pip install sshclick
     

   • (OR) from source using pip

     git clone https://github.com/karlot/sshclick
     cd sshclick
     pip install .
     

3. Use it as you like, sshc command should be available to access SSHClick application, see below chapter for basic usage

4. Install shell autocompletion (TAB-TAB auto-completes on commands, options, groups and hosts)

   • Bash - Add this line to end of your ~/.profile file:

     eval "$(_SSHC_COMPLETE=bash_source sshc)"
     

   • Zsh - Add this line to end of your ~/.zshrc file:

     eval "$(_SSHC_COMPLETE=zsh_source sshc)"
     

Upgrade procedure

• Upgrade from new PyPI release:

  pip install --upgrade sshclick
  

• Upgrade from source: Assuming installation is already done, and previous version is cloned in some local folder

  cd sshclick     # cd into existing previously cloned repo folder
  git pull
  pip install --upgrade .
  

Uninstall procedure

Simply run:

pip uninstall sshclick

In case you have installed from cloned source code, you can delete locally cloned repo.

rm -r sshclick

---

SSH Config structure, and important note about comments

SSHClick when editing and writing to SSH config file must use specific style, and is internally using comments to "organize" configuration itself. This means comments outside of what sshclick is handling are unsupported and will be lost when SSHClick modifies a file.)

Comment blocks and metadata in SSH Config

SSHClick uses comments to add extra information which it can use to add concept of grouping and extra information to hosts. Special "metadata" lines start with #@ followed by some of meta-tags like group, desc, info. This are all considered group metadata tags, as they apply on the group level. Note that line separations above and below "group header" are added only for visual aid, they are ignored at parsing, but are included when modifying/generating SSH config file.

This "headers" can be added manually also in SSH config, or sshclick can add them and move hosts under specific group, using sshc cli tool

Normally start of the "GROUP HEADER" inside SSH Config would look like below.

• #@group: is KEY metadata tag, that during "parsing" defines that all hosts configured below this "tag" belong to this group
• #@desc: is optional tag that adds "description" to defined group, and will display in usual group display commands
• #@info: is optional tag that can appear multiple times, adding extra information lines tied to the group.

Additionally each "host" definition can have optional meta info:

• #@host: is optional tag that can appear multiple times, that can hold some information about the host, this meta info when defined applies to next "host" definition that will appear. If this key is added after "host" keyword, it will be applied to next host, for that reason, keep this host meta info above the actual host definition.

Following is sample how group header is rendered by SSHClick:

#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#@group: <GROUP-NAME>       [MANDATORY]   <-- This line starts new group
#@desc: <GROUP-DESCRIPTION> [OPTIONAL, SINGLE]
#@info: <GROUP-INFO-LINES>  [OPTIONAL,MULTIPLE]
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Host ...    <-- this hosts definitions are part of the defined group
    param1 value1
    param2 value2

#@host: <HOST-INFO-LINES>  [OPTIONAL,MULTIPLE] <-- Adds info to following host
Host ...

<ANOTHER GROUP HEADER>

If there are no groups defined, then all hosts are considered to be part of "default" group. SSHClick can be used to move hosts between groups and handle keeping SSH config "tidy" and with consistent format.

Example usage and features

SSHClick is deploying sshc cli tool that allows interacting with your SSH Config file and perform various organization,listing, displaying and modification of SSH Group/Host configuration parameters.
sshc comes with pre-built lots of help options so each level of commands provide --help options to provide you info what commands and options are available at which command level.

For example to check version, type: sshc --version
Sample output:

$ sshc --version
SSHClick (sshc) - Version: 0.4.1

If you run sshc command alone, or adding -h or --help option, it will show help what else must be added to the command...
Example:

$ sshc --help
Usage: sshc [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  SSHClick - SSH Config manager

  Note: As this is early alpha, backup your SSH config files before this
  software, as you might accidentally lose some configuration

Options:
  --sshconfig PATH  Config file, default is ~/.ssh/config
  --stdout          Send changed SSH config to STDOUT instead to original file
  --version         Show current version
  -h, --help        Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  group  Manage groups
  host   Manage hosts

Main sub-commands are for separate control of:

• Groups (via sshc group command)
  • Allows operation of groups inside SSH config
• Hosts (via sshc host command)
  • Allows operation of hosts inside SSH config

group commands and options

To manage "groups" type sshc group --help to see options.
example:

$ sshc group --help
Usage: sshc group [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  Manage groups

Options:
  -h, --help  Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  create  Create new group
  delete  Delete group
  list    Lists all groups
  set     Change group parameters
  show    Shows group details

host commands and options

To manage "groups" type sshc host --help to see options.
example:

$ sshc host --help
Usage: sshc host [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  Manage hosts

Options:
  -h, --help  Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  create  Create new host configuration
  delete  Delete host from configuration
  list    List hosts
  set     Changes/sets host configuration parameters
  show    Display info for host
  test    Test SSH host connection

Output styling and user ENV variables

sshc host show can display host output is several formats, you can specify it with sshc host show <host> --style <style>
Available styles are:

Style	Description
panels (default)	Display data in several panels
card	Add data to single "card"
simple	Simple output with minimal decorations
table	Flat table with 3 columns
table2	Nested table with separated host SSH params
json	JSON output, useful for binding with other tools

If you want to have some style statically set for your shell, you can export ENV variable with export SSHC_HOST_STYLE=table, and add it to .profile or .bashrc or .zshrc, so its set when shell session is starting, to set "default" style to that one.

In case user do not line "fancy" colors in output, you can set ENV variable to disable all color outputs with export NO_COLOR=1. If you want it permanently you can add it to startup "rc" files as well.

NOTE! When sending output into non-terminal such as to file, SSHClick will recognize that and will remove all ANSI Escape characters (colors and stuff...) so that output is captured in clear way.

Recorded demos

Following demos will use this config sample file as input (located in ~/.ssh/config):

#<<<<< SSH Config file managed by sshclick >>>>>

#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#@group: network
#@desc: Network devices in my lab
#@info: user='admin' password='password'
#@info: Not really, but for demo its ok :)
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Host net-switch1
    hostname 10.1.1.1

Host net-switch2
    hostname 10.1.1.2

Host net-switch3
    hostname 10.1.1.3

Host net-*
    user admin


#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#@group: jumphost
#@desc: Edge-server / SSH bastion
#@info: Used for jump-proxy from intnet to internal lab servers
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Host jumper1
    hostname 123.123.123.123
    user master
    port 1234


#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#@group: lab-servers
#@desc: Testing/Support servers
#@info: Some [red]important[/] detail here!
#@info: We can have color markups in descriptions and info lines
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Host lab-serv1
    hostname 10.10.0.1
    user admin

Host lab-serv2
    hostname 10.16.141

Host lab-*
    user user123
    proxyjump jumper1

Host server-behind-lab
    hostname 10.30.0.1
    user testuser
    port 1234
    proxyjump lab-serv1

Demo showing some sshc group operations:

Demo showing some sshc host operations:

Demo displaying "end-to-end" tunnel visualization in graph

Author

Karlo Tisaj
email: [e-mail]
github: https://github.com/karlot

License

MIT License