ProxyJump: simplest way to ssh with a jump host

Ever need to jump your ssh through an intermediate host? You may be familiar with using netcat like this in your ~/.ssh/config:

Host jumpy
  ProxyCommand ssh -q jump-host nc destination-host %p

ProxyCommand runs on our local machine. The command must open a tcp connection that ssh may then use for the session. Here we shell into our jump-host, connecting the file descriptors to nc, which will forward all data to destination-host on %p, the port you provided to -p on the cli.

Clear as mud, no?

Another slightly more readable way to achieve this is with -W

Host jumpy
  ProxyCommand ssh -W destination-host jump-host

This works the same way as the nc version, but now we are using ssh's internal implementation of nc. So one less dependency on the jump host.

But behold, the most legit and legible version of jumping hosts:

Host jumpy
  Hostname destination-host
  ProxyJump jump-host

So same thing, but now the words say what it does.

When you get lost remember that .ssh/config has it's own man page:

$ man ssh_config

Thanks Dillon!

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