Ask HN: Developers, how do you keep SSH and web URLs organized at work?

Most of my ssh connections are aliased via my dotfiles. I use bookmarks in browser.

Keep it simple

SSH: ~/.ssh/known_hosts and ~/.ssh/config

Web URLs - Use bookmarks or write yourself a small local html file with a bit more organisation. Or use a text file with an editor that makes it easy to Cmd+Click a link.

Less simple, but great for teams, use a wiki page with the appropriate links.

For web application URLs and things like it (server names, IP addresses, things I need to keep track of), I keep it all in a vimwiki tech.md file in my ~/notes directory. I used to use org-mode, but it was overkill for me and after 20+ years of using vi, switching to emacs (even spacemacs) was a tough adjustment.

For SSH endpoints, I more or less have everything aliased in my ~/.ssh/config file. If it's just a server, I can just ssh hostname. If it's a host I'm doing port forwarding on, I'll have it aliased to ssh hostname-tunnel or ssh hostname-SOCKS5.

On windows, WinSCP has a nice internal folder structure for saving all your links. I tend to keep a txt file of all my urls though.

What I'd like to see, but haven't yet, is a way to teach a browser extension about my environments, what they are named and what their URL patterns are such that I can get a border color-indicator of "hey, you're in prod!" and have a quick switcher to view the same page I'm on now, but in a different environment (this page looks weird in test, was it already like that on prod, wonder if I can debug in my local dev) -- and export this configuration to share with newbs.

For URLs i have a single html page that I use as a starting page for my “dev” browser, which I edit manually when I add a new environment/tool.

For ssh I just use bash history, but I don’t have a ton of environments

TextExpander which is more or less like alias

For SSH, using your ssh config file[0] is probably the most idiomatic way to go about it. For web applications I tend to rely on using plain old bookmarks, using bookmark folders to keep related URLs together. It's a fairly simple system but it manages everything together where I'm most likely to use it.

[0] https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-conf...

Webpages - Bookmark folders organized by Application/System then Environment then functional use. Site specific info/creds in LastPass

Ssh - ssh config named as <system>_<environent>

rest APIs - postman collections by system

  # Sample bastion host configuration without ForwardAgent
  # Host bastion
  #       User bastion_user
  #       Hostname 10.11.12.13
  #       IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_bastion
  #
  # Host server
  #       User server_user
  #       Hostname 192.168.0.1
  #       IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_server
  #       ProxyCommand ssh -q -W %h:%p bastion

SSH endpoints go into ~/.ssh/config

Keepass2: https://keepass.info/

You can configure custom url handlers so that it opens the terminal then ssh right in the server you clicked on.

With a firefox extension, it let you autofill credentials.

Simple one file to backup or sync. Always encrypted. Crossplateform. Free software. Robust. Proven. And a Fugly UI that looks corporate enough for you pointy hair boss.

The only thing missing is that I'm using a cmd otp generator for one time passwords, but it doesn't have keepass support yet.

I have a handwritten notebook, like a science logbook.

If your password manager supports it, make a secure note with all the URLs you use regularly. My work keep a big wiki of documentation, including frequently accessed servers, which seems to work really well - it also allows us to document each individual server.

When in doubt, write it down, preferably somewhere secure to prevent leaking anything if handling sensitive data. Excel spreadsheets work pretty well too, but formatting might get a bit distracting.

At a previous job we ran a lot of client-facing servers and kept most of the URLs in our server monitoring software. It wasn't great and there wasn't a lot of documentation, but frequently accessed servers were all in a central place (save for our test/Ansible servers).

We have a wiki, but I personally keep everything in an Org-mode file.

Once upon a time I used a sandbox (just a simple locally hosted web app) to manage my work URLs and web tools. Now, I just use bookmarks cause it is more simple. Also config files for SSH.

I keep URLs organized in groups each one in a separate text file. One URL per line plus bash style comments for lines beggining with hash. Unfortunately browsers don’t support file with URLs as a command line parameter (as e.g. wget) so I have custom shell script accepting the file and opening each URL in new tab.

    environments/
      development/
        readme.md
        services/
          service1/
            readme.md
          service2/
            readme.md
      preproduction/
        ...
      production/
        ...

Mac? I like Shuttle for SSH organization: https://github.com/fitztrev/shuttle

SSH:

Windows: mRemoteNG

Linux: Gnome connection manager

Mac: Iterm 2 profiles (any better options?)

I created aliases in .bashrc. For instance, instead of 'ssh -i [key] user@devenvurl' I aliased it to 'ssh-dev'

Use SSH config for SSH.

I built a database on AWS DynamoDB + API Gateway which has the "url" information. Also many other things, like which newrelic accounts are used by each environment. This is intended to be used by automation, but humans can just curl | jq these.

That said, SSH access (by humans) should be very rare. If you have to SSH to a production system, ask yourself what is it that you are trying to accomplish, and would you still be doing that if you had another tool to accomplish the same operation?

Just append aliases to .bash_profile? E.g. alias connect-amazon-example="ssh -i ~/.ssh/amazon-example-key.pem ubuntu@123.123.123.123" Then just 'connect-amazon-example' at the terminal?

     ~/.ssh/config

is really simple, I never needed anything else.

For URLs, I use bookmarks, that's it. You might actually need more, or you might think you might need more :D but I don't think so.

Also different URL collections have different places, for example I collected all our developer documentation URLs in a single wiki (Confluence) page with a permalink and put it under an easy-to-remember internal domain.

I do 2 things:

1) As others have already written, I use ssh config to organize the urls and have simpler host names.

2) I use 2/3 letter codes as aliases which ssh into the specific host.

For ex- Environment - tool

sw = staging webserver pw = production webserver pj = production jenkins.

This allows me to open a new terminal window and type 2/3 characters to ssh into a box.

For my ssh environments, I use iTerm2 profiles with keyboard shortcuts to launch. However, I only have about 5 servers that I need to ssh to.

I find chrome bookmarks sufficient for my website bookmarks. They sync across computers and can be organized in folders.