openssh unix dev - Aug 2008 - HostName not quite working as expected?

On Thu, 28 Aug 2008, Jay Levitt wrote:
> I would have expected that "ssh myhost" would then start a
session on
> port 23 (instead of 22).  And I've seen blog/list posts that suggest
the
> same (which, of course, I can't find now), as a workaround for
"Host"
> entries not canonicalizing via DNS.
...
> Is this the intended behavior?  It seems like a bug to me, but it's 
> still present in the 20080829 5.1 snapshot, and nobody's ever mentioned
> it before.  Maybe it's just something that could be documented better?
The behaviour is intended and documented. From ssh_config(5):
> Host    Restricts the following declarations (up to the next Host key-
>         word) to be only for those hosts that match one of the patterns
>         given after the keyword.  If more than one pattern is provided,
>         they should be separated by whitespace.  A single `*' as a pat-
>         tern can be used to provide global defaults for all hosts.  The
>         host is the hostname argument given on the command line (i.e. the
>         name is not converted to a canonicalized host name before match-
>         ing).
-d

Setting up a few hosts in a small domain, I thought I'd save keystrokes 
by defining ssh_config aliases for their
non-canonicalized names.  For example:

Host myhost
  HostName myhost.example.com

Host *.example.com
  Port 23
  ...

I would have expected that "ssh myhost" would then start a session on 
port 23 (instead of 22).  And I've seen blog/list posts that suggest the 
same (which, of course, I can't find now), as a workaround for
"Host"
entries not canonicalizing via DNS.

But that's not what happens.  "ssh myhost" correctly connects to 
myhost.example.com, but doesn't pick up any of the *.example.com host 
configuration.  Likewise adding:

Host myhost.example.com
  Port 23

it still connects on port 22.

Is this the intended behavior?  It seems like a bug to me, but it's 
still present in the 20080829 5.1 snapshot, and nobody's ever mentioned 
it before.  Maybe it's just something that could be documented better?

Jay Levitt

Jay Levitt wrote:
> as a workaround for "Host" entries not canonicalizing via DNS.
By setting up DNS you could save keystrokes in all other apps too.


//Peter