[PLUG] Restoring ssh-agent with passphrase

[Rich Shepard]

Regenerating the public/private key pairs on the new desktop allowed
rsync, ssh, and scp to work once more. And they sill do today. Whew!

I had activated ssh-agent and used ssh-add to add my passphrase to it.
This no longer works and I cannot re-add my passphrase. I killed the
ssh-agent and restarted it, but the ssh-add command does not ask for the
passphrase, just returns the shell prompt.

My web search didn't find an appropriate solution and I hope someone here
can.

Regards,

Rich

[Rich Shepard]

Are you sure your new key has a passphrase? When you use the key directly
(without the agent), do you have to enter a passphrase?

Wes,

Good question. When I use ssh and scp I'm asked for my passphrase. Is
this what you're asking?

Regards,

Rich

[Rich Shepard]

Yes, that's what I'm asking. I don't know why ssh and scp would ask for it
but ssh-add wouldn't.

Wes,

That makes two of us.

Wild guess: maybe you now have 2 keys enabled, one with a passphrase and
one without.

Not intentionally.

... ssh is using the one with the passphrase, and ssh-add is
using the one without.

I looked at man ssh-keyscan but that looks for keys on all hosts rather
than telling me what keys are in the agent. If there's a ssh-add switch that
allows me to force entering my passphrase in the agent I did not recognize
when reading the man page.

Thanks,

Rich

[Louis Kowolowski]

man ssh-add(1)

-D Deletes all identities from the agent.
-l Lists fingerprints of all identities currently represented by the agent.

You can delete all identities, list them, to make sure there aren't any in the agent, and then re-add them with:
ssh-add <path-to-key-file> will add your key

Post by Rich Shepard

Yes, that's what I'm asking. I don't know why ssh and scp would ask for it
but ssh-add wouldn't.

Wes,
That makes two of us.

Wild guess: maybe you now have 2 keys enabled, one with a passphrase and
one without.

Not intentionally.

... ssh is using the one with the passphrase, and ssh-add is
using the one without.

I looked at man ssh-keyscan but that looks for keys on all hosts rather
than telling me what keys are in the agent. If there's a ssh-add switch that
allows me to force entering my passphrase in the agent I did not recognize
when reading the man page.
Thanks,
Rich
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--
Louis Kowolowski ***@cryptomonkeys.org <mailto:***@cryptomonkeys.org>
Cryptomonkeys: http://www.cryptomonkeys.com/ <http://www.cryptomonkeys.com/>

Making life more interesting for people since 1977

[Rich Shepard]

Post by Louis Kowolowski
man ssh-add(1)
-D Deletes all identities from the agent.
-l Lists fingerprints of all identities currently represented by the agent.
You can delete all identities, list them, to make sure there aren't any in
the agent, and then re-add them with: ssh-add <path-to-key-file> will add
your key

Thanks, Louis.

Would the path be ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub?

Rich

[Rich Shepard]

Post by Rich Shepard
Would the path be ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub?

Ah, no. It's the private key so the command is
ssh-ad .ssh/id_ed25519
and when I was asked for my passphrase and entered it ssh returned
acknowledgement that it was added to the agent.

Thanks very much, Louis,

Rich

[Cryptomonkeys.org]

Post by Rich Shepard

Post by Louis Kowolowski
man ssh-add(1)
-D Deletes all identities from the agent.
-l Lists fingerprints of all identities currently represented by the agent.
You can delete all identities, list them, to make sure there aren't any in
the agent, and then re-add them with: ssh-add <path-to-key-file> will add
your key

Thanks, Louis.
Would the path be ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub?

By default, your SSH keys are located in ~/.ssh. The public key would not be added to the agent. The private key would be added to the agent. You probably want ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.
If you have multiple keys, you can add them all (ssh-add /path/to/private/keys/*) - yes, glob on the end to grab them all at once
Of note, SSH will only use the first 3 keys by default. If you have more than 3 keys, I suggest you look at specifying a key in your ~/.ssh/config for the specific host(s).

--
Louis Kowolowski ***@cryptomonkeys.org <mailto:***@cryptomonkeys.org>
Cryptomonkeys: http://www.cryptomonkeys.com/ <http://www.cryptomonkeys.com/>

Making life more interesting for people since 1977

[Rich Shepard]

Post by Rich Shepard
Regenerating the public/private key pairs on the new desktop allowed
rsync, ssh, and scp to work once more. And they sill do today. Whew!

I found the problem: for some reason that I had a line in ~/.bash_logout
that told ssh-agent to dump the key. Sheesh! I've no idea why I ever did
this. But, this has been fixed.

Rich