You're here because you'd like to know how to set up your ssh config (and proxy).

Some reasons to do the first:

• You don't want to use your password
• You want to set up a shorter alias

• You want to proxy jump to avoid a VPN

Here are the steps to go password-less:

• On your local machine, perform cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub and copy the results to your clipboard.
• ssh into your remote host with your usual method. Perform mkdir -p ~/.ssh and then append the contents of your clipboard to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys using a method of your choice. An easy way to do this is echo 'content' >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys, replacing content as necessary.
• At this point, you should be able to ssh into your remote and it should not ask for a password. Feel free to try it out now. Note that this is different if you are the root user, and requires some extra steps, explained well here.

Next up, here are the steps to add an alias for your config:

• On your local machine, open up ~/.ssh/config with your favorite text editor. For me, this means emacs ~/.ssh/config.
• The simplest configuration looks like this:

            Host lnxsrv07
              User arteen
              HostName lnxsrv07.seas.ucla.edu
          

  Host specifies the alias. User the user to log-in for. HostName is the endpoint. For example, where before you had typed ssh arteen@lnxsrv07.seas.ucla.edu, you can now type ssh lnxsrv07.

Finally, for those of you who'd like to bypass a VPN, I neither condone, admonish, or take any responsibility for this behavior:

• Simply add the following line to the previous configuration:

              ProxyJump server
          

  where server is a remote host within the network you would like to access that does not require the usage of a VPN.
• You can now perform ssh lnxsrv07 from anywhere you like, without VPN or password.