Disable SSH Kitten for specific hosts (Windows)

[Xevion]

Hi, I'm having issues with the SSH Kitten for a specific host: a Windows one, my personal desktop.

The system cannot find the file specified.
'die' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
'die' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
Shared connection to 192.168.100.1 closed.

I can solve this by doing \ssh instead of ssh, but that's not really a workaround I want to start using habitually.
The configuration options for the SSH kitten seem pretty elaborate, but my tests have not yielded one that works.

I don't care for using any of Kitty's special features - I just want to SSH into my remote host without any special options or arguments. ssh username@hostname is all I'm looking for.

I tried a couple variations of the following config, but nothing really works. Maybe I am misunderstanding what these options do?

hostname username@hostname
shell_integration disabled
remote_kitty no

[kovidgoyal]

https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/kittens/ssh/#opt-kitten-ssh.delegate

[Xevion]

I read this configuration line, but I don't know how to use it.

When I put delegate, I get

❯ ssh xevion@hostname
[251 02:38:17.537602] Ignoring invalid config line: delegate

When I put delegate ssh, I get

❯ ssh xevion@hostname
[251 02:39:09.875347] Ignoring unknown config key: delegate

I attempted to search online for usages of delegate, but nothing comes up - not even in this repository. How does this configuration option work?

[kovidgoyal]

Put it in ssh.conf

[Xevion]

Yes, ~/.config/kitty/ssh.conf is where I am placing my delegate line. It looks like below:

hostname xevion@<redacted IP>
shell_integration disabled
remote_kitty no
delegate ssh

[kovidgoyal]

Update kitty

[Xevion]

Done, v0.29.2, but the problem remains the same. I'm connecting to the exact hostname specified in the config file, but no variation of the delegate line has an effect. The errors with the config line being invalid are gone, though.

[kovidgoyal]

Works for me with kitten ssh --kitten=delegate=ssh localhost Then ps aux | grep ssh there is no kitten in the output showing that the ssh kitten did indeed delegate to ssh, as expected.

[Xevion]

Is it possible that my config is improperly formatted? In the wrong directory? Bad encoding?
Or that my hostname isn't matching?
The configuration file's format is not well detailed on here, or I didn't find where it is.

[kovidgoyal]

Dont see how since you were getting a message about delegate not being recognized till you updated kitty which means the config was being read. And the following also works as expected

echo "\nhostname localhost\ndelegate ssh" >> ~/.config/kitty/ssh.conf; kitten ssh localhost

[kovidgoyal]

Leave off the username.

[kovidgoyal]

Both in th econfig file and on the command line

[Xevion]

Okay, making a little progress.
The following configurations of hostname worked for me (in using delegate)

hostname *
hostname xevion@*
hostname 192.168.100.1
hostname XX.YY.40.5

Even when using a Host alias (defined in ~/.ssh/config) like ssh desktop, it worked just fine.
It doesn't work when the hostname is defined as an IPv4 address like 192.168.100.1 in conjunction with a username.

The following configurations don't work

hostname xevion@192.168.100.1
hostname xevion@XX.YY.40.5

XX and YY here obviously are redacted for my privacy.

[kovidgoyal]

On Fri, Sep 08, 2023 at 02:28:27AM -0700, Xevion wrote: Okay, making a little progress. The following configurations of hostname worked for me (in using `delegate`) ``` hostname * hostname xevion@* ``` Even when using a Host alias (defined in `~/.ssh/config`) like `ssh desktop`, it worked just fine. It doesn't work when the hostname is defined as an IPv4 address like `192.168.100.1`.

Works fine for me with hostname 127.0.0.1

[Xevion]

Reply has been edited; I didn't realize I had to leave off the username from the hostname. I assumed from some of the things the docs said that it supported any style of hostname configuration. I'm guessing defining hostnames like username@host is not intended or available?

[Xevion]

For my case, technically this problem is resolved, but there are still cases that I don't know how to solve here.
There doesn't seem to be a way to target a username and hostname at the same time in the ssh.conf config,
which is an entirely reasonable want.

[kovidgoyal]

af42135

[rabbiveesh]

is a release coming soon containing this fix?

[Xevion]

Just released in 0.30.0, testing and confirmed that things are working how I expected them to. Wildcards, usernames etc. all match properly with the hostname directive. Great work!