Use ~.ssh/config to always set TERM=cygwin for certain hosts?

Question

I use WinSSHd on several Windows servers. To access them from my Mac (and presumably, just about any Unix-based terminal), I need to set the TERM environment variable to cygwin, e.g.:

TERM=cygwin ssh someserver.com

I can also use the .ssh/config to set certain defaults for that server, such as a different user and non-default port:

host someserver.com
    User SomeDifferentDude
    Port 22222

However, I apparently can't set environment variables that way. I haven't found anything in man ssh_config, anyway. Is there a way to set the default terminal emulation (and/or any environment variable) per host?

Answer 1

You would typically set the environment variable on the server side.

If WinSSHd is sufficiently like openssh (the usual unix implementation of ssh), you can define an environment file (~/.ssh/environment on unix) and put TERM=cygwin there.

You can also set the environment variable in your shell initialization file. Since you mention cygwin, this is presumably ~/.bash_profile where ~ is your cygwin home directory. You should set it conditionally, in case you also use cygwin on other terminal types; for example, to set it only if you are logging in over ssh (again, assuming WinSSHd is sufficiently like openssh):

if [ -n "$SSH_CLIENT" ]; then
  export TERM=cygwin
fi

Answer 2

It turns out there's a much better solution — WinSSHd supports Unix's terminfo format, so all I had to do is copy the proper terminfo file (in the case of OS X: xterm-color) into its directory, and the TERM=cygwin setting become unnecessary.

Answer 3

You can use SendEnv TERM to set the TERM on the server to be the same as the TERM on your local machine.