# Hostnames hit by knife ssh

**URL:** <https://discourse.chef.io/t/hostnames-hit-by-knife-ssh/3460>\
**Category:** Chef Infra (archive)\
**Created:** [December 5, 2012, 8:31am UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/hostnames-hit-by-knife-ssh/3460 "2012-12-05T08:31:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Kallen](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/kallen/32/1049_2.png) [@Kallen](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Kallen)\
**Post date:** [December 5, 2012, 8:31am UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/hostnames-hit-by-knife-ssh/3460/1 "2012-12-05T08:31:07Z")

</div>

hi. recently i noticed when i use knife ssh, the hostnames in the output  
are the EC2 public dns hostnames, which i guess is  
node[‘ec2’][‘public\_hostname’]. it didn’t used to do that. knife ssh  
used to spit out node[‘fqdn’].

tho i haven’t confirmed by sniffing traffic, i’m assuming knife ssh  
is hitting my nodes using node[‘ec2’][‘public\_hostname’] as opposed to  
node[‘fqdn’]. my desired behavior is for knife ssh to hit node[‘fqdn’],  
which is the private name on RFC-1918 space, because we are ceasing  
allowing ssh from the internet in our EC2 security groups.

today, undesired:

[oberon chefdev]$ knife ssh “bender\_role:app AND chef\_environment:fry” 'uname -m’  
[ec2-17-2-59-33.compute-1.amazonaws.com](http://ec2-17-2-59-33.compute-1.amazonaws.com) x86\_64  
[ec2-23-23-2-20.compute-1.amazonaws.com](http://ec2-23-23-2-20.compute-1.amazonaws.com) x86\_64  
[ec2-23-21-77-23.compute-1.amazonaws.com](http://ec2-23-21-77-23.compute-1.amazonaws.com) x86\_64  
[ec2-174-129-90-16.compute-1.amazonaws.com](http://ec2-174-129-90-16.compute-1.amazonaws.com) i686

in the past, desired:

$ knife ssh “bender\_role:app AND chef\_environment:fry” 'uname -m’  
[webapp04.bender.fry.com](http://webapp04.bender.fry.com) x86\_64  
[webapp01.bender.fry.com](http://webapp01.bender.fry.com) x86\_64  
[webapp08.bender.fry.com](http://webapp08.bender.fry.com) x86\_64  
[admin08.bender.fry.com](http://admin08.bender.fry.com) i686

anyone know how this changed? or how i can get the behavior of knife ssh  
hitting node[‘fqdn’]?

today i’m using knife from chef 10.16.2. in the past, i don’t know  
which version it would’ve been.

thanks in advance,  
kallen

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Steven\_Danna](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/steven_danna/32/195_2.png) [@Steven\_Danna](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Steven_Danna)\
**Post date:** [December 5, 2012, 9:30am UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/hostnames-hit-by-knife-ssh/3460/2 "2012-12-05T09:30:56Z")

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On 12/5/12 12:31 AM, [kallen@groknaut.net](mailto:kallen@groknaut.net) wrote:

> anyone know how this changed? or how i can get the behavior of knife ssh  
> hitting node['fqdn']?

The feature was added in 10.14.0 in subsequently improved/changed. The  
commit is 3c52de54beb03a371b06a7b451591c650a79bb8a in the Chef repository.

Across the cloud providers, the thought was that  
node['cloud']['public\_hostname'] would be the more reliable name to  
connect to.

You should be able to use fqdn by doing the following:

```
knife ssh "QUERY' -a fqdn

```

I hope this helps.

Sincerely,

Steven

--  
Steven Danna  
Systems Engineer, Opscode, Inc  
GPG Key: [http://stevendanna.github.com/downloads/code/public.key](http://stevendanna.github.com/downloads/code/public.key)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![JD\_Harrington](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/jd_harrington/32/505_2.png) [@JD\_Harrington](https://discourse.chef.io/u/JD_Harrington)\
**Post date:** [December 5, 2012, 1:15pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/hostnames-hit-by-knife-ssh/3460/3 "2012-12-05T13:15:32Z")

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You can also set this in knife.rb if you prefer.

knife[:ssh\_attribute] = "fqdn"

On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 4:30 AM, Steven Danna [steve@opscode.com](mailto:steve@opscode.com) wrote:

> On 12/5/12 12:31 AM, [kallen@groknaut.net](mailto:kallen@groknaut.net) wrote:
> 
> > anyone know how this changed? or how i can get the behavior of knife ssh  
> > hitting node['fqdn']?
> 
> The feature was added in 10.14.0 in subsequently improved/changed. The  
> commit is 3c52de54beb03a371b06a7b451591c650a79bb8a in the Chef repository.
> 
> Across the cloud providers, the thought was that  
> node['cloud']['public\_hostname'] would be the more reliable name to  
> connect to.
> 
> You should be able to use fqdn by doing the following:
> 
> ```
> knife ssh "QUERY' -a fqdn
> 
> ```
> 
> I hope this helps.
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> Steven
> 
> --  
> Steven Danna  
> Systems Engineer, Opscode, Inc  
> GPG Key: [http://stevendanna.github.com/downloads/code/public.key](http://stevendanna.github.com/downloads/code/public.key)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Kallen](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/kallen/32/1049_2.png) [@Kallen](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Kallen)\
**Post date:** [December 5, 2012, 7:05pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/hostnames-hit-by-knife-ssh/3460/4 "2012-12-05T19:05:20Z")

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awesome. thanks for the tips everyone!

kallen

On Wed, 05 Dec 2012, JD Harrington wrote:

> You can also set this in knife.rb if you prefer.
> 
> knife[:ssh\_attribute] = "fqdn"
> 
> On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 4:30 AM, Steven Danna [steve@opscode.com](mailto:steve@opscode.com) wrote:
> 
> > On 12/5/12 12:31 AM, [kallen@groknaut.net](mailto:kallen@groknaut.net) wrote:
> > 
> > > anyone know how this changed? or how i can get the behavior of knife ssh  
> > > hitting node['fqdn']?
> > 
> > The feature was added in 10.14.0 in subsequently improved/changed. The  
> > commit is 3c52de54beb03a371b06a7b451591c650a79bb8a in the Chef repository.
> > 
> > Across the cloud providers, the thought was that  
> > node['cloud']['public\_hostname'] would be the more reliable name to  
> > connect to.
> > 
> > You should be able to use fqdn by doing the following:
> > 
> > ```
> > knife ssh "QUERY' -a fqdn
> > 
> > ```
> > 
> > I hope this helps.
> > 
> > Sincerely,
> > 
> > Steven
> > 
> > --  
> > Steven Danna  
> > Systems Engineer, Opscode, Inc  
> > GPG Key: [http://stevendanna.github.com/downloads/code/public.key](http://stevendanna.github.com/downloads/code/public.key)