Jumper is a simple and fast cli ssh manager. The goal was to reuse some ideas like the Ansible YAML inventory and Ansible Vault.

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Installation

With Homebrew

You can use the following command to install Jumper to your system:

brew install jklaiber/tap/jumper

With curl

You can use the following command to install Jumper to your system:

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jklaiber/jumper/main/install/install.sh)"

Manually

You can also download the latest release from the release page and install it manually.

Usage

The tool can be used to connect over ssh to the saved hosts in the inventory.

Connect for example to an ungrouped host:

$ jumper connect ungroupedhost1

Or to a host which belongs to a group:

$ jumper connect -g webservers webserver1

Edit the inventory directly with jumper or with ansible-vault:

$ jumper edit inventory
$ ansible-vault edit .jumper.inventory.yaml

Configuration

Autocompletion

In order to use the autocompletion feature you have to generate the autocompletion file for your specific shell.

Example for bash:

$ source <(jumper completion bash)

You can add this command to your .bashrc.

Inventory

The inventory is completely inspired by the Yaml Ansible inventory (more here).

The following variables mean the same:

• ansible_user = username
• ansible_ssh_pass = password
• ansible_host = address

The basic structure is as follows:

all:
  hosts:
    ungroupedhost1:
    ungroupedhost2:
  children:
    webservers:
      hosts:
        webserver1:
          address: webserver1.example.com
        webserver2:
          address: webserver2.example.com
      vars:
        username: foo
        password: bar
    dbservers:
      hosts:
        dbserver1:
          address: 192.168.1.10
          username: foo
          password: bar
        dbserver2:
          address: 192.168.1.11
          username: foo
          sshagent: True
          sshagent_forwarding: True
    fileserver:
      hosts:
        fileserver1:
  vars:
    sshkey: /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa
    username: globalusername

Variables Inheritance

More generic variables will be automatically applied to the hosts. The prioritization rule is as follows:

1. Direct host variables
2. Group variables
3. Global variables

Authentication Methods

The are three different authentication methods implemented which can be used:

• password authentication (password as string)
• ssh key authentication (path to ssh key)
• ssh agent authentication (bool)

The prioritization rule is as follows:

1. ssh agent
2. ssh key
3. password

In the example below the choosen authentication method would be sshagent.

all:
  children:
    webservers:
      hosts:
        foo.example.com:
          username: userfoo
          password: passfoo
          sshagent: True
  vars:
    sshkey: /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa
    username: globalusername

Encryption

The whole encryption is done with Ansible Vault.

Through the usage of the same mechanism like Ansible Vault, there is also the possiblity to use ansible-vault to edit the inventory file:

$ ansible-vault edit inventory.yaml

The inventory is completely encrypted and can therefore also be synchronised to a e.g. cloud file service like Onedrive or GoogleDrive.