Laziness: Remote SSH Usernames

I’m lazy and I’m always looking for ways to avoid any unneeded typing. Here’s a little OpenSSH configuration tip that can save you up to 16 characters (if you have crazy long usernames). When your local username doesn’t match the one on the remote server, do you find yourself routinely typing something like:

ssh ec2-user@some-aws-box.com

What if I told you that you could reduce it to just:

ssh some-aws-box.com

Edit, creating if need be, ~/.ssh/config and add a rule like:

Host some-aws-box.com
 User ec2-user

The rule is pretty much as it seems, when connecting to host some-aws-box.com use ec2-user for the remote username.

The Host line allows multiple hostnames and has limited wildcard support, allowing rules like:

Host some-aws-box.com *.aws-domain.com
 User ec2-user

Bonus, this laziness leads to even greater laziness, the stock Bash SSH completion helper will Tab-complete a bare hostnames matching those it finds in ~/.ssh/known_hosts, but not one that starts starts with a username.

What will you do with all the key strokes you save?