| No. I typed in a passphrase. in that case, you'll have to use ssh-agent and enter the passphrase using ssh-add (see the respective man pages for info). | What I'm looking for is the ability to connect to a machine on my | LAN, without entering a password, but with it authenticating me | based on my authorized_keys file. | | Isn't the passphrase, just to protect the private key? yes, so you have to enter it any time you need to decrypt the private key. | If I enter the passphrase, it works. I don't want to enter | ANYTHING. Do I need to use .shosts? if you want to authenticate with *your* RSA key, then .shosts won't help (it's used, I believe, to specify authentication based on a hosts's RSA key ala .rhosts). ssh-agent and ssh-add will take care of this for you. here's what I do: ---- in my X login script, I have ssh-agent exec my window manager. therefore, all programs I run are a child of the ssh-agent process. after I'm logged in, I goto an xterm and do 'ssh-add'. It asks for my passphrase. After I enter it, the passphrase is stored in RAM. Now, anytime I want to connect to another host, the agent is checked (hence that "asdf.capslock.lan: No agent." for you) -- and it will decrypt your private key and respond to the RSA challenge. I do a 'ssh-add -d' to remove the key from the agent whenever I leave the system for long periods of time (typically overnight). ---- Does this help? -- Randomly Generated Tagline: "Porte-Kochere" - Sacramental wine
