How can I make a ssh connection to my server without the IP address?

Question

I created a public SSH key on my local computer and added it to my github account. Now I want to connect to my server (online) via terminal, in order to clone my git project to the server of my provider. In an online tutorial to connect they suggest:

 ssh root@< IP-ADDRESS OF THE SERVERS>

But in my server settings I can online find the following data: SSH-Hostname,SSH-Username,SSH-Port,SSH Fingerprint

Is it possible to connect also with Hostname and Username? Because I cannot find the ip address of my provider.

Thank you

I'm not sure how this question has _anything_ to do with git _at all_. — tkausl, Aug 06 '22 at 15:52
Once logged into the server, try cloning the repo `git clone ssh@github.com/username/repo.git`? — evolutionxbox, Aug 06 '22 at 15:54
Is your question about cloning a Git repository, or connecting to a machine using SSH? Your title says the former, but the body says the latter. — ndc85430, Aug 06 '22 at 15:54
Logging into a server using ssh isn't a programming question, I found this article which may help https://www.howtogeek.com/311287/how-to-connect-to-an-ssh-server-from-windows-macos-or-linux/ — evolutionxbox, Aug 06 '22 at 15:56
@evolutionxbox That is the point, it is not working that way — peace_love, Aug 06 '22 at 15:58
Ask the ssh log in question on https://superuser.com/. Once logged in, clone the repo using the ssh link on github.com — evolutionxbox, Aug 06 '22 at 15:59
To answer your question: if the hostname resolves to an IP address, yes. — Barry Carter, Aug 06 '22 at 16:09
@tkausl: it's not about Linux or terminals either :-) and it's only sort-of-vaguely about ssh, when it comes to that. — torek, Aug 06 '22 at 17:13

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 06 '22 at 17:19

This isn't really on topic here (stackoverflow), but I'll put in a quick answer anyway: ssh makes a network connection to an ssh server, therefore ssh needs a network address for the server. This need not be an IP address, except for one other issue, which is that the ssh protocol is defined as a TCP protocol and TCP runs over IP (v4 or v6).

That said, almost all networking systems have a mechanism for translating a host name to a set of addresses (some of which may be IP addresses; others might be XNS or IPX or some such: see What is Address Family?). So you just need user@host, and something—OS and/or library dependent—will look up the proper IP address. You can leave off the user@ part in some cases.

If (this is a pretty big "if") your system can't translate the host name to an IP address, or does it incorrectly, then you can resort to a raw IP address. This bypasses the translation step. If you don't trust your translation software, you can do this intentionally.

How can I make a ssh connection to my server without the IP address?

1 Answers1