DJ Sipe

When you have a wide array of internal servers that you need to be able to SSH into at any given moment to check this or that, I find it's best to spend a little time and craft a quick bash script.

This script allows you to present the user (yourself) with a menu of options and then select the one you want. Each menu option can run any number of different bash commands, but I find it helpful to just use shh commands.

Create your script

First, create your script. I use the following structure which I pilfered from the hallowed pages of StackOverflow some time ago and regret not bookmarking it for attribution here.

#!/bin/bash
# Bash Menu Script Example

# Heading
echo; echo "SSH Menu"; echo

# Menu
PS3='Please enter your choice: '  
options=("Server 1" "Server 2" "Quit")  
select opt in "${options[@]}"  
do  
    case $opt in
        "Server 1")
          ssh server-1@example.com; break
          ;;
        "Server 2")
          ssh server-2@example.com; break
          ;;
        "Quit")
            break
            ;;
        *) echo invalid option;;
    esac
done

Save this script as something obvious like "ssh_menu.sh".

Make it easy to access

What is the use of having a handy menu if it's hard to find. To that end, I would recommend you create an alias. In most Linux flavors you can do this by editing your .bashrc or .bash_profile scripts. To keep things really simple I use the alias "s" for my SSH menu.

Assuming you put your ssh_menu.sh script in your home directory, you can add this to your .bashrc or .bash_profile script: 

alias s="~/ssh_menu.sh"

Viola! Now you can access your menu of servers any time you need to by just typing the command "s".

You may need to run source ~/.bashrc or source ~/.bash_profile to see the SSH menu like this:

$ s

SSH Menu

1) Server 1  
2) Server 2  
3) Quit  
Please enter your choice:
linux