Agent skill

ssh-essentials

Essential SSH commands for secure remote access, key management, port forwarding, tunneling, file transfers, and SSH configuration best practices.

View SKILL.md on GitHub Repository
Stars 163
Forks 31

Install this agent skill to your Project

npx add-skill https://github.com/majiayu000/claude-skill-registry/tree/main/skills/other/other/ssh-essentials

SKILL.md

SSH Essentials

Basic Connection

bash
ssh user@hostname
ssh user@hostname -p 2222
ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa user@hostname
ssh -v user@hostname        # verbose (debug)
ssh -J jumphost user@target # jump host / bastion

SSH Keys

bash
# Generate key
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "[email protected]"
ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "[email protected]"

# Copy key to server
ssh-copy-id user@hostname
ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub user@hostname

# Check loaded keys
ssh-add -l

# Add key to agent
ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa
ssh-add -K ~/.ssh/id_rsa   # macOS: add to keychain

Port Forwarding & Tunneling

bash
# Local port forwarding (access remote service locally)
ssh -L 8080:localhost:80 user@remote
ssh -L 3306:db-server:3306 user@bastion    # MySQL through bastion

# Remote port forwarding (expose local service to remote)
ssh -R 8080:localhost:3000 user@remote

# Dynamic SOCKS proxy
ssh -D 1080 user@remote

# Persistent tunnel with autossh
autossh -M 0 -N -L 3306:localhost:3306 user@remote

File Transfers

bash
# SCP
scp file.txt user@host:/remote/path/
scp user@host:/remote/file.txt /local/path/
scp -r /local/dir user@host:/remote/dir

# rsync (preferred for directories)
rsync -avz /local/dir/ user@host:/remote/dir/
rsync -avz --delete /local/dir/ user@host:/remote/dir/
rsync -avz -e "ssh -p 2222" /local/dir/ user@host:/remote/dir/

SSH Config (~/.ssh/config)

Host myserver
    HostName 192.168.1.100
    User deploy
    Port 22
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519
    ServerAliveInterval 60
    ServerAliveCountMax 3

Host bastion
    HostName bastion.example.com
    User admin

Host prod-db
    HostName 10.0.0.5
    User deploy
    ProxyJump bastion
bash
ssh myserver     # uses config above

Security Best Practices

bash
# /etc/ssh/sshd_config best practices:
PermitRootLogin no
PasswordAuthentication no
PubkeyAuthentication yes
AllowUsers deploy
MaxAuthTries 3
LoginGraceTime 30
ClientAliveInterval 300
ClientAliveCountMax 2

# After changes:
sshd -t          # test config
systemctl restart sshd

Troubleshooting

bash
ssh -vvv user@host          # max verbosity
journalctl -u sshd -f       # server logs
tail -f /var/log/auth.log   # auth attempts
ss -tlnp | grep :22         # check sshd listening

Tips

  • Always use ed25519 keys (faster, more secure than RSA 2048)
  • Never disable StrictHostKeyChecking in production
  • Use SSH agent forwarding (-A) sparingly — security risk
  • ProxyJump is the modern replacement for ProxyCommand
  • ServerAliveInterval 60 prevents timeout on idle connections

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