On Wed, Mar 01, 2000 at 12:44:56PM -0500, William Stearns wrote:
> > passphrase by just hitting enter, otherwise you won't be asked
> > for a password, but you'll be asked for an RSA passphrase every
> > time which is equally annoying.
>
> There's an easier way, and it's quite elegant. Here's what I do.
> On my main workstation, I log in as myself and run:
> ssh-agent >~/agent #Start the ssh-agent
> . ~/agent #tell this shell and all subshells how to find it
The above two lines can be replaced by
eval `ssh-agent`
Which is slightly more elegant as it does not use a file.
I use xdm and have this in my .xsession.
> ssh-add #Type in my passphrase once
> startx #Go onto X
>
> Now, in all the subshells I start under X, I only need to type:
> ssh the_remote_machine #Assuming it has my key in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
> or
> scp -p a_file the_remote_machine
> and I'm in; no additional passphrase needed.
> Is this truly more useful than just having no passphrase at all?
> Yes, actually. First, if someone got access to the private key file, they
> wouldn't be able to use it without my passphrase. Secondly, I can ssh to
> one machine that has my public key, and from that machine ssh to _another_
> machine that also has my public key; the middle machine can use the
> ssh-agent on the original workstation to authenticate itself to the final
> target machine.
> If I log into other terminals or X servers that aren't spawned
> from that original shell, all I need to type is
> . ~/agent
> and I have the same access to the ssh-agent.
> Pretty nifty idea; thanks, Tatu!
> Cheers,
> - Bill
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> "As a computer I find your faith in technology amusing."
> (Courtesy of Gerhard Mack <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> William Stearns ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). Mason, Buildkernel, named2hosts,
> and ipfwadm2ipchains are at: http://www.pobox.com/~wstearns/
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
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