Usage

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.

Installation

Ubuntu (12.04 and 14.04 only)

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:russell-s-stewart/ppa
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install sshrc

Archlinux

Install the sshrc-git AUR package.

OS X

$ brew install sshrc

Everything else

$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Russell91/sshrc/master/sshrc
$ chmod +x sshrc
$ sudo mv sshrc /usr/local/bin #or anywhere else on your PATH

Advanced configuration

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. For example, vim uses the VIM environment variable.

$ mkdir -p ~/.sshrc.d
$ echo ':imap <special> jk <Esc>' > ~/.sshrc.d/vimrc
$ echo 'export VIM=$SSHHOME/.sshrc.d' > ~/.sshrc
$ sshrc me@myserver
$ vim # jk -> normal mode will work

Putting too much data in ~/.sshrc.d will slow down your login times. If the folder contents are > 100kB, the server may start blocking your sshrc attempts.

If you use tmux frequently, you can make sshrc work there as well.

$ echo 'alias tmux="SHELL=$SSHHOME/bashsshrc tmux -S /tmp/russelltmux"
  export SHELL=`which bash`
  alias foo="echo I work with tmux, too"' > ~/.sshrc
$ sshrc me@myserver
$ tmux
$ foo
I work with tmux, too

When the SHELL variable is set, any new tmux server will load your configurations. The -S option will start a separate tmux server at /tmp/russelltmuxserver. Don't try to access the vanilla tmux server when your SHELL environment variable is set: if the server isn't already running, other users will get your configurations with their own sessions.

Troubleshooting

See the active issues if you're having a problem. Here are known current issues:

• In rare cases your system may complain when you change your VIM environment variable. You can use alias vim='vim -u /path/to/.vimrc' in these cases.
• xxd must be installed on both your local computer and server. If this is not the case, you can't use the tool. xxd can be installed via apt-get install vim-common or yum install vim-common
• Temp files are not deleted during a ssh timeout due to the script being killed with a SIGHUP message before cleanup. This is fixed in master.
• Finally, if the tool is hanging or giving errors about argument strings, you'll most likely need to reduce the size of your .sshrc.d directory. To debug the directory size, use tar cz -h -C ~ .sshrc .sshrc.d | wc -c