How do you guys quickly sync your settings (especially bash aliases and ssh keys) across your machines?

Ideally i want a simple script to run on every new server I work with. Any suggestions?

  • Baron Von J
    35•2 years ago

    I suggest you don’t sync SSH keys. That’s just increasing the blast radius of any one of those machines being compromised.

    • @RegalPotoo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6•2 years ago

      Exactly this. Don’t move private keys between machines. Generate them where you need them, it’s not like they cost anything

    • @wmassingham@lemmy.world
      3•2 years ago

      Right. Use some kind of centralized authentication like freeipa.

      For bash aliases, I just pull down a .bashrc from github gists.

      • PHLAKEnglish
        7•2 years ago

        OP should just generate a unique SSH key per device (+ user).

        • MuddybulldogEnglish
          4•2 years ago

          Agreed. I’ve probably got 100 keys registered with GitHub and 98 of them the private key is long destroyed due to OS reinstalls or whatnot. Format machine, new key. New machine, new key.

          • PHLAKEnglish
            1•2 years ago

            FYI: You can remove the old keys from GitHub.

      • mFatOPEnglish
        1•2 years ago

        Is the url is easy to rember?

  • @restlessyet@discuss.tchncs.de
    15•2 years ago

    I’m surprised no one mentioned ansible yet. It’s meant for this (and more).

    By ssh keys I assume you’re talking about authorized_keys, not private keys. I agree with other posters that private keys should not be synced, just generate new ones and add them to the relevant servers authorized_keys with ansible.

    • @dinosaurdynasty@lemmy.world
      2•2 years ago

      If the keys are password protected… eh why not sync them.

      Also ssh certificates are a thing, they make doing that kind of stuff way easier instead of updating known hosts and authorized keys all the time

    • @Toribor@corndog.socialEnglish
      2•2 years ago

      I use Ansible for this as well. It’s great. I encrypt secrets with Ansible vault and then use it to set keys, permissions, config files, etc. across my various workstations. Makes setup and troubleshooting a breeze.

  • Atemu
    11•2 years ago

    Dotfiles go in git, SSH keys are state.

    I’m looking to migrate to home-manager though because I use Nix on all my devices anyways.

    • @some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
      1•2 years ago

      I also have multiple versions of by bash_profile with syntax specific to the OS. It checks if we’re on MacOS or Linux with a kernel check and then reads the appropriate ancillary bash_profile for that platform. Anything that can live in the main bash_profile with the same command on both platforms lives there and anything that needs to be system-specific is in the other one.

      I have all my important functions as individual files that get loaded with the following:

      function loadfuncs() {
	local funcdir="$HOME/.dotfiles/functions/"
	[ -e "${funcdir}".DS_Store ] && rm "$HOME/.dotfiles/functions/.DS_Store"
	local n=0

	for i in "${funcdir}"*; do
		source "$(realpath $i)"
		n=$(( n + 1 ))
	done
}
loadfuncs
    • @noUsernamesLef7@infosec.pub
      3•2 years ago

      I love this solution, I’ve been using it for years. I had previously just been using the home directory is a git repo approach, and it never quite felt natural to me and came with quite a few annoyances. Adding stow to the mix was exactly what I needed.

    • @pspinler@beehaw.org
      1•2 years ago

      Ditto – I’ve been keeping a central to me git repo for my settings for years. Any new machine I’m on ‘git clone ; ./settings/setup.sh’, then my pull’d .profile does a git pull on login.

  • @Pantherina@feddit.de
    8•2 years ago

    Syncthing. If you want flatpak, syncthingy.

    Its simply best, does all the annoying background things like webUI, machines, versioning, verifying etc. If you disable global discovery you can use it tough LAN only

  • S410
    7•2 years ago

    On my devices like PCs, laptops or phones, syncthing syncs all my .rc files, configs, keys, etc.

    For things like servers, routers, etc. I rely on OpenSSH’s ability to send over environmental variables to send my aliases and functions.
    On the remote I have
    [ -n "$SSH_CONNECTION" ] && eval "$(echo "$LC_RC" | { { base64 -d || openssl base64 -d; } | gzip -d; } 2>/dev/null)"
    in whatever is loaded when I connect (.bashrc, usually)
    On the local machine
    alias ssh="$([ -z "$SSH_CONNECTION" ] && echo 'LC_RC=$(gzip < ~/.rc | base64 -w 0)') ssh'

    That’s not the best way to do that by any means (it doesn’t work with dropbear, for example), but for cases like that I have other non-generic, one-off solutions.

  • @bloopernova@programming.devEnglish
    5•2 years ago

    I use a git repo combined with the basic install utility. Clone the repo, run the app installer, then run the install script. For symlinks I just use a zsh script.

    • mFatOPEnglish
      1•2 years ago

      Thanks that’s a good idea.

  • @tvcvt@lemmy.ml
    4•2 years ago

    I keep my dotfiles in a got repo and just do a git pull your update them. That could definitely be a cron job if you needed.

    SSH keys are a little trickier. I’d like to tell you I have a unique key for each of my desktop machines since that would be best practice, but that’s not the case. Instead I have a Syncthing shared folder. When I get around to cleaning that up, I’ll probably do just that and keep an authorize_keys and known_hosts file in git so I can pull them to needed hosts and a cron job to keep them updated.

  • @zhenbo_endle@lemmy.ca
    1•2 years ago

    My solution is not ideal:

    I created a directory, called ~/config_sync. I create sym links for config files, like ~/.bashtc to ~/config_sync/bashrc

    However, I need to record the sym links I’ve created, and repeat this process on new machines