How t setup SSH shortcut

An SSH shortcut is an entry in your SSH config file. Once it's set up, you can connect by typing ssh myvm instead of the full command with the key, username and IP address.

1. Open (or create) the config file

• Mac / Linux: ~/.ssh/config

  mkdir -p ~/.ssh && nano ~/.ssh/config
  

• Windows (PowerShell): C:\Users\<you>\.ssh\config. Make sure the file has no extension: Notepad likes to save it as config.txt.

  notepad $HOME\.ssh\config
  

2. Add one block per VM

Host oci-vm1
    HostName 152.67.xx.xx
    User ubuntu
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/oci-vm1.key
    IdentitiesOnly yes
    ServerAliveInterval 60

Host oci-vm2
    HostName 129.154.xx.xx
    User opc
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/oci-vm2.key
    IdentitiesOnly yes
    ServerAliveInterval 60

• Host: the shortcut name you'll type. Pick anything you like.
• HostName: the VM's public IP, which you can find on the instance page in the OCI console.
• User: use ubuntu for Ubuntu images and opc for Oracle Linux.
• IdentityFile: the private key you downloaded when you created the VM. On Windows you can write the path as C:/Users/<you>/.ssh/oci-vm1.key.
• ServerAliveInterval 60: keeps idle sessions from being dropped.

3. Fix the key permissions (Mac / Linux)

SSH refuses to use a key that other users can read, so run:

chmod 600 ~/.ssh/config ~/.ssh/*.key

4. Connect

ssh oci-vm1

The shortcut also works with file copying, for example scp file.txt oci-vm1:~/ or rsync -av folder/ oci-vm1:~/folder/. VS Code's Remote-SSH extension picks these entries up automatically.

If you get "Permission denied (publickey)", it's almost always one of two things: the username is wrong (ubuntu and opc are easy to mix up) or the key file permissions are too open (step 3).