DevOps on Tap

10 SSH Flags That Make You Faster, Safer & Stealthier

Hey engineer,

SSH is your gateway to every box you own so why are we still typing ssh user@host and calling it a day?

Here’s a list of 10 useful SSH flags that’ll make you faster, safer, and a little bit sneakier when you need to be.

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1. -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no

Skip annoying fingerprint prompts (CI/CD, auto-scripts):

ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no user@host

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2. -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa_custom

Use a specific private key:

ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa_prod user@host

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3. -o ConnectTimeout=5

Don’t hang forever on unreachable hosts:

ssh -o ConnectTimeout=5 user@host

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4. -q

Quiet mode (great for clean script output):

ssh -q user@host uptime

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5. -t

Force pseudo-terminal (needed for interactive commands):

ssh -t user@host "sudo systemctl restart nginx"

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6. -J (Jump Host / Bastion)

ssh -J bastion@bastion.company.com dev@app.internal

Chains SSH connections through a bastion host.

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7. -L (Local Port Forwarding)

ssh -L 8080:localhost:9200 user@remote

Tunnel remote services to your local machine.

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8. -D 1080

SOCKS proxy (browse via your server):

ssh -D 1080 user@host

Use with browser proxy settings for secure traffic routing.

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9. -N

Don’t run a remote command (perfect for port forwards):

ssh -N -L 3306:localhost:3306 user@db-server

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10. -f

Run SSH in the background after authentication:

ssh -f -N -L 5432:localhost:5432 user@db

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Bonus Tip: Combine with SSH config

Use ~/.ssh/config to create aliases with all the flags baked in:

Host prod
  HostName 10.1.2.3
  User admin
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_prod
  StrictHostKeyChecking no

Now just:

ssh prod

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SSH is a toolkit, not just a login.
Use it with precision and win back time on every box you touch.

Stay sharp…

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P.S. I recently released a DevOps Starter Kit — a bundle of 20+ Bash scripts, cron jobs, and Docker templates to speed up your infrastructure setup.
If you do a lot of server work, you might find it useful.

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No need to spend hours manually hardening servers
With this Security Hardening Kit, containing production-level Bash scripts, you can automate it in 1 hour.
Grab it here 👉

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