Hi Max, ok, lots of restarts etc later I found the culprit: gnome-keyring
> /etc/X11/Xsession.d/90x11-common_ssh-agent > is responsible for ssh-agent, while: > /etc/X11/Xsession.d/90gpg-agent Actually up to here everything is fine and the gpg agent is started, the SS_AUTH_SOCKET var is properly exported. Only then something rewrites it. I have added some set -x to see what is happening in the sessions, and all is fine till 95dbus_update-activation-env and thus I assume till 99x11-common_start The next log entries are about fcitx starting, can be ignored I guess (this is my input method). And then ... *FIRST* there was a line SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/var/tmp/1000/ or so --> --> I removed *both* libpam-ssh (that states that it is setting the SSH_AUTH_SOCK etc) and also libpam-tmpdir. Ok, fine I thought ... but now I have: SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/run/user/1000/keyring/ssh Checking that directory I see: control pkcs11 ssh lsof of these files showed the culprit, gnome-keyring, stilll I need to reboot and get rid of this bastard ... Next I disabled the gnome-keyring configuration of libpam with pam-auth-update, logged out, restarted the computer, just to be sure, but gnome-keyring-daemon starts up persistenly. I guess the problem is that gnome-keyring-daemon drops an entry into /etc/xdg/autostart/gnome-keyring-*.desktop (for ssh,pkcs11,secrets). Besides uninstalling gnome-keyring, do you see a different method? Is this a bug in gnome-keyring? I guess yes, but what should one do, Gnome is going its own way in creating their own OS, so they will not listen anyway. All the best Norbert -- PREINING Norbert + TeX Live & Debian Developer + http://www.preining.info GPG: 0x860CDC13 fp: F7D8 A928 26E3 16A1 9FA0 ACF0 6CAC A448 860C DC13