I've enabled the banner that appears before the password prompt by setting it it sshd_config. However certain users (especially me) really don't need to see the banner (it also screws up a lot of scripting). I want to be able to disable it for certain users or maybe even certain IP addresses. How do I do this?
Just to be clear, this is the banner that is normally in /etc/issue.net, not the one that can be silenced with .hushlogin.
Here's an example. Details about how Match works is in sshd_config man page.
excerpt
Match Introduces a conditional block. If all of the criteria on the Match line are satisfied, the keywords on the following lines override those set in the global section of the config file, until either another Match line or the end of the file. The arguments to Match are one or more criteria-pattern pairs. The available criteria are User, Group, Host, and Address. The match patterns may consist of single entries or comma-separated lists and may use the wildcard and negation operators described in the PATTERNS section of ssh_config(5). Details on the patterns that are permissible are in ssh_config man page under "PATTERNS".
excerpt
PATTERNS A pattern consists of zero or more non-whitespace characters, ‘*’ (a wildcard that matches zero or more characters), or ‘?’ (a wildcard that matches exactly one character). For example, to specify a set of declarations for any host in the “.co.uk” set of domains, the following pattern could be used: Host *.co.uk The following pattern would match any host in the 192.168.0.[0-9] network range: Host 192.168.0.? A pattern-list is a comma-separated list of patterns. Patterns within pattern-lists may be negated by preceding them with an exclamation mark (‘!’). For example, to allow a key to be used from anywhere within an organisation except from the “dialup” pool, the following entry (in authorized_keys) could be used: from="!*.dialup.example.com,*.example.com" Match User user1,user2 Banner "none" Use one or more Match stanzas in sshd_config that match the appropriate criteria, and set the Banner option inside it/them to none.
Match User someuser \tBanner none