What's the difference between Host and HostName in SSH Config?

For github.com your ~/.ssh/config might look like this

Host github.com
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/key_name_for_github

For hostname: as man says it allows you to specify abbreviation for host. For example, if your ~/.ssh/config look like this

Host host1
    HostName host1.example.com
Host host2
    HostName anotherdomain.com

Then when you type

  • ssh host1 you actually login to host1.example.com
  • ssh host2 login to anotherdomain.com

In simple usage:

Host is the actual hostname & there's no HostName

OR

Host is the nickname of the host & HostName is the actual hostname.

Simple example:

$ cat ~/.ssh/config
Host dev
    Hostname <hostname>
    User <username>
    IdentityFile <path_to_private_key>

$ ssh dev
# Equivalent to "ssh -i <path_to_private_key> <username>@<hostname>"

Note: The man page is technically correct, it's just worded a bit strangely. I would add a few more words for clarity: HostName Specifies the real host name to log into. This can be used *TOGETHER WITH 'HOST'* to specify nicknames or abbreviations for hosts.

Tags:

Ssh

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