Ah, thanks! I indeed had it after a Host block with indentation / paragraph, so I was misled in thinking of them as actual "paragraphs". Putting CanonicalizeHostname at the top of the file indeed works.
So it seems this was a deliberate change, or just accidentally happened to work before. So I guess we can close this. Thank you for your help! ** Changed in: openssh (Ubuntu) Status: Confirmed => Won't Fix -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to openssh in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1487361 Title: 6.9 stopped respecting "User" in previous stanzas Status in openssh package in Ubuntu: Won't Fix Bug description: My ~/.ssh/config has Host *.canonical.com User pitti and some convenience aliases as the actual host names change from time to time: Host cdimage HostName nusakan.canonical.com Host langpack HostName macquarie.canonical.com For years, until the previous Wily version 6.7 this was working as expected. But since today with 6.9 trying to ssh to e. g. langpack stopped taking the "User pitti" into account: $ ssh -v cdimage [...] debug1: Authenticating to nusakan.canonical.com:22 as 'martin' [...] Permission denied (publickey). "martin" is my local user name at my laptop, i. e. the default when "User" isn't set. If I don't use the alias and do "ssh nusakan.canonical.com" it does apply the User setting. ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 15.10 Package: openssh-client 1:6.9p1-1 ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.1.0-3.3-generic 4.1.3 Uname: Linux 4.1.0-3-generic x86_64 ApportVersion: 2.18-0ubuntu7 Architecture: amd64 CurrentDesktop: Unity Date: Fri Aug 21 10:14:46 2015 EcryptfsInUse: Yes RelatedPackageVersions: ssh-askpass N/A libpam-ssh N/A keychain N/A ssh-askpass-gnome 1:6.9p1-1 SSHClientVersion: OpenSSH_6.9p1 Ubuntu-1, OpenSSL 1.0.2d 9 Jul 2015 SourcePackage: openssh UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install) To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openssh/+bug/1487361/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages Post to : touch-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp