The autossh systemd service uses configuration files from the

/etc/autossh directory. Each configuration file should define a single

variable OPTIONS, which contains all command line options to pass to

the respective autossh service instance. The configuration file is the

name of the service instance suffixed with .conf, for example

autossh@myconnection.service loads its configuration from the

/etc/autossh/myconnection.conf file. For example (all on one line,

wrapped here for readability):

    OPTIONS=-M 0 -NT

        -o "ServerAliveInterval 60" -o "ServerAliveCountMax 3"

        -l autossh -i /path/to/id_rsa -L 7474:127.0.0.1:7474

        srv.example.com

Note that it is not necessary to configure everything related to the

actual connection in $OPTIONS, instead just as with regular ssh(1)

use, the -F option can be used there to load them from separate

configuration files. For example:

    OPTIONS=-M 0 -N -F /path/to/myconnection_ssh_config srv.example.com

The services run as the autossh user by default. This means that

functionality requiring root access, for example forwarding local

privileged ports, is not available to them. If root functionality is

required, it can be accomplished through the systemd unit override

mechanisms, see systemd.unit(5).