Bring your config files with you

This is a fork of Russell91's awesome sshrc utility. The original goal of this project was to refactor Russell91's script to make it more readable and more modular. Since then, I have also introduced some additional features to the script.

• Help text and man page entry
• Supports more than one base64 encoding utility
• Configurable compression utility (--archiver); bzip2 generally seems to work best in my experience
• Support for defining your own shell wrapper; this can be used, for example, to start zsh instead of bash
• Better MOTD support
• More files can be included in .sshrc.d
  • The original sshrc limits you to 64KB because this is the maximum command size on some machines; not all machines are limited to 64KB though, so this version makes the check configurable (--arg-max)
  • This version allows not uploading the script itself to the remote server (--no-bin); this provides a small amount of extra space
  • The --arg-size flag allows you to see how big the command will be
• Debug flags that give more insight into the inner workings of the script

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.

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

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 server's /tmp directory after login. You can find them at $SSHHOME/.sshrc.d. You can usually tell programs to load their configuration from the $SSHHOME/.sshrc.d directory by setting the right environment variables. Putting too much data in ~/.sshrc.d will slow down your login times. If the folder contents are > 64kB, the server may block your sshrc attempts.

$ mkdir -p ~/.sshrc.d
$ echo ':imap <special> jk <Esc>' >> ~/.sshrc.d/.vimrc
$ cat << 'EOF' >> ~/.sshrc
export VIMINIT="let \$MYVIMRC='$SSHHOME/.sshrc.d/.vimrc' | source \$MYVIMRC"
EOF
$ sshrc me@myserver
$ vim # jk -> normal mode will work

If you use tmux frequently, you can make sshrc work there as well. The following seems complicated, but hopefully it should just work.

$ cat << 'EOF' >> ~/.sshrc
alias foo='echo I work with tmux, too'

tmuxrc() {
    local TMUXDIR=/tmp/mytmuxserver
    if ! [ -d $TMUXDIR ]; then
        rm -rf $TMUXDIR
        mkdir -p $TMUXDIR
    fi
    rm -rf $TMUXDIR/.sshrc.d
    cp -r $SSHHOME/.sshrc $SSHHOME/.sshrc.d $TMUXDIR
    SSHHOME=$TMUXDIR /usr/bin/tmux -S $TMUXDIR/tmuxserver $@
}
export SHELL=`which bash`
EOF
$ sshrc me@myserver
$ tmuxrc
$ foo
I work with tmux, too

The -S option will start a separate tmux server. You can still safely access the vanilla tmux server with tmux. Tmux servers can persist for longer than your ssh session, so the above tmuxrc function copies your configs to the more permenant /tmp/russelltmuxserver, which won't be deleted when you close your ssh session. Starting tmux with the SHELL environment variable set to bashsshrc will take care of loading your configs with each new terminal. Setting SHELL back to /bin/bash when you're done is important to prevent quirks due to tmux sessions having a non-default SHELL variable.

You may have different configurations for different servers. I would recommend putting configurations in separate directories and then specifying which one to use with SSHHOME:

SSHHOME=~/.ssh/server1 sshrc server1
# or
cd ~/.ssh/server1 && sshrc server1

You can also use the following structure for your ~/.sshrc control flow:

if [ $(hostname | grep server1 | wc -l) == 1 ]; then
    echo 'server1'
fi
if [ $(hostname | grep server2 | wc -l) == 1 ]; then
    echo 'server2'
fi

• I don't recommend trying to throw your entire .vim folder into ~/.sshrc.d. It will more than likely be too big.

• You can avoid duplication of dotfiles using symlinks (e.g. $ cd ~/.sshrc.d && ln -s ../.tmux.conf .tmux.conf/ ).

• For larger configurations, consider copying files to an obscure folder on the server and using ~/.sshrc to automatically source those configurations on login.

• To enable tab completion in zsh, add compdef sshrc=ssh to your .zshrc file.

• To enable tab completion in bash, add complete -F _ssh sshrc to your .bashrc file. (This assumes you have installed an SSH completion from the bash-completion package.