At least as of Emacs 24 they have a new version of multi you can open paths like this: /ssh:bird@bastion|ssh:you@remotehost:/path I can confirm that this works on my version of Emacs 24.3.1. The docs describe it here.
If the account you’re connecting to uses some weird fancy shell prompt, then there is a good chance that this is what makes tramp trip. Log in as root, then enter PS1=”> ” (that’s a normal, standard shell (ZSH, BASH, younameit) prompt, one that tramp will understand) then switch to the user account, and launch … Read more
There is no TRAMP equivalent to ssh user@host -i private-key.pem. However, if you run the shell command ssh-add private-key.pem, then ssh (and thus TRAMP) will automatically use private-key.pem for authentication. Simply ssh user@host will work on the shell, and opening the file /user@host:~/filename.txt will work in emacs, without it prompting for a password.
As of Emacs 24.3, an analog of the old multi: syntax has been layered on top of the modern tramp-default-proxies-alist approach, meaning that you can once again perform multi-hops without any prior configuration. For details, see: C-hig (tramp)Ad-hoc multi-hops RET With the new syntax, each ‘hop’ is separated by |. The example in the manual … Read more