ssh-add —
adds RSA or DSA identities to the authentication agent
ssh-add |
[-cDdLlXx] [-t
life] [file ...] |
ssh-add adds RSA or DSA identities to the authentication
agent, ssh-agent(1). When run without arguments, it adds the
files $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa,
$HOME/.ssh/id_dsa and
$HOME/.ssh/identity. Alternative file names can be
given on the command line. If any file requires a passphrase,
ssh-add asks for the passphrase from the user. The
passphrase is read from the user's tty. ssh-add
retries the last passphrase if multiple identity files are given.
The authentication agent must be running and the
SSH_AUTH_SOCK environment variable must contain the
name of its socket for ssh-add to work.
The options are as follows:
-c- Indicates that added identities should be subject to confirmation before
being used for authentication. Confirmation is performed by the
SSH_ASKPASS program mentioned below. Successful
confirmation is signaled by a zero exit status from the
SSH_ASKPASS program, rather than text entered into
the requester.
-D- Deletes all identities from the agent.
-d- Instead of adding the identity, removes the identity from the agent.
-e
reader- Remove key in smartcard reader.
-L- Lists public key parameters of all identities currently represented by the
agent.
-l- Lists fingerprints of all identities currently represented by the
agent.
-s
reader- Add key in smartcard reader.
-t
life- Set a maximum lifetime when adding identities to an agent. The lifetime
may be specified in seconds or in a time format specified in
sshd_config(5).
-X- Unlock the agent.
-x- Lock the agent with a password.
DISPLAY
and SSH_ASKPASS- If
ssh-add needs a passphrase, it will read the
passphrase from the current terminal if it was run from a terminal. If
ssh-add does not have a terminal associated with
it but DISPLAY and
SSH_ASKPASS are set, it will execute the program
specified by SSH_ASKPASS and open an X11 window to
read the passphrase. This is particularly useful when calling
ssh-add from a .xsession
or related script. (Note that on some machines it may be necessary to
redirect the input from /dev/null to make this
work.)
SSH_AUTH_SOCK- Identifies the path of a unix-domain socket used to communicate with the
agent.
- $HOME/.ssh/identity
- Contains the protocol version 1 RSA authentication identity of the
user.
- $HOME/.ssh/id_dsa
- Contains the protocol version 2 DSA authentication identity of the
user.
- $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa
- Contains the protocol version 2 RSA authentication identity of the
user.
Identity files should not be readable by anyone but the user. Note
that ssh-add ignores identity files if they are
accessible by others.
Exit status is 0 on success, 1 if the specified command fails, and 2 if
ssh-add is unable to contact the authentication agent.
OpenSSH is a derivative of the original and free ssh 1.2.12 release by Tatu
Ylonen. Aaron Campbell, Bob Beck, Markus Friedl, Niels Provos, Theo de Raadt
and Dug Song removed many bugs, re-added newer features and created OpenSSH.
Markus Friedl contributed the support for SSH protocol versions 1.5 and 2.0.