SSH-ADD(1)                  General Commands Manual                 SSH-ADD(1)

NAME
     ssh-add – adds RSA or DSA identities for the authentication agent

SYNOPSIS
     ssh-add [-lLdD] [file ...]

DESCRIPTION
     ssh-add adds RSA or DSA identities to the authentication agent,
     ssh-agent(1).  When run without arguments, it adds the file
     $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 it 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 must be an ancestor of the
     current process for ssh-add to work.

     The options are as follows:

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

     -L      Lists public key parameters of all identities currently
             represented by the agent.

     -d      Instead of adding the identity, removes the identity from the
             agent.

     -D      Deletes all identities from the agent.

FILES
     $HOME/.ssh/identity
             Contains the protocol version 1 RSA authentication identity of
             the user.  This file should not be readable by anyone but the
             user.  Note that ssh-add ignores this file if it is accessible by
             others.  It is possible to specify a passphrase when generating
             the key; that passphrase will be used to encrypt the private part
             of this file.  This is the default file added by ssh-add when no
             other files have been specified.

     $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.

ENVIRONMENT
     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.)

AUTHORS
     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.

SEE ALSO
     ssh(1), ssh-agent(1), ssh-keygen(1), sshd(8)

BSD                           September 25, 1999                           BSD