Convenient Remote Access with SSH Config

If you are working with a lot of remote ssh hosts it becomes hard to remember all that host specific information: username, ip address, identity file, non-standard port or local/remote port forwarding. ssh_config to rescue. Here is a sample to give you an idea (file ~/.ssh/config):

Compression yes
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa
LogLevel ERROR
Port 22

Host h1
    HostName 192.168.91.57
    User master
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/h1.pem

Host db1
    HostName usca45d1.example.com
    User pg
    LocalForward 5432 127.0.0.1:5432

The above configuration let me access those hosts simply by name, e.g.:

ssh h1
scp schema.sql db1:~/

How to manage Git or Mercurial repositories

Managing version control repositories can be a challenge in multi-user environment especially when simplification of user collaboration is your goal. There are usually two primary concerns while considering enterprise deployment for version control repositories: access control and safety of your data. Both are not directly addressed by version control itself, thus a sort of security facade is necessary.