using alias instead of IP in scp

Question

I have a desktop in the office that I often need to access from home and use scp to copy files. Currently I am doing it like this ``` scp username@x.x.x.x ... ``` I want a mechanism that I dont have to type the IP address each time I want to scp something. I was trying to do it by creating an alias, but it doesn't seem to work. Can I give my desktop machine a name so that instead of typing the ip address I can use the name of the machine instead ?

Accepted Answer

One way to deal with this is to create an entry in your ssh configuration. This can be done on a system wide basis or, if you don't have root access on this box, just for your user.

The per user configuration file is `~/.ssh/config` and uses the following format

```
host my_desktop
    hostname 11.22.33.44
```

This method is also nice because you can specify other options like the user name. To find out more about the options available try `man ssh_config`.

using alias instead of IP in scp

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