On the client side, we have a few ways to configure how a connection will be held:
- From the command line, passing options to the client while invoking it
- From the configuration file inside the user's home directory ~/.ssh/config
- From the system-wide configuration file in /etc/ssh/ssh_config
For the configuration files, we must bear in mind that only the first value obtained for each directive will be used; so if we give the same directive multiple times, only the first one will be evaluated. So, we must keep the more specific options at the beginning of the configuration file while the broader one will be pushed toward the end.
As we will see in the next paragraph, where we will examine a practical use of the client configuration, the file is segmented into sections whose boundaries are delimited by the Host directive: whatever configuration directive is listed...