ssh-add(1) User Commands ssh-add(1)NAMEssh-add - add RSA or DSA identities to the authentication agent
SYNOPSISssh-add [-lLdDxX] [-t life] [ file ...]
DESCRIPTION
The ssh-add utility adds RSA or DSA identities to the authentication
agent, ssh-agent(1). When run without arguments, it attempts to add all
of the files $HOME/.ssh/identity (RSA v1), $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa (RSA v2),
and $HOME/.ssh/id_dsa (DSA v2) that exist. If more than one of the pri‐
vate keys exists, an attempt to decrypt each with the same passphrase
will be made before reprompting for a different passphrase. The
passphrase is read from the user's tty or by running the program
defined in SSH_ASKPASS (see below).
The authentication agent must be running.
OPTIONS
The following options are supported:
-d Instead of adding the identity, this option removes the iden‐
tity from the agent.
-D Deletes all identities from the agent.
-l Lists fingerprints of all identities currently represented by
the agent.
-L Lists public key parameters of all identities currently repre‐
sented by the agent.
-t life Sets a maximum lifetime when adding identities to an agent.
The lifetime may be specified in seconds or in a time format
specified in sshd(1M).
-x Locks the agent with a password.
-X Unlocks the agent.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
DISPLAY If ssh-add needs a passphrase, it will read the
SSH_ASKPASS passphrase from the current terminal if it was run from
a terminal. If ssh-add does not have a terminal associ‐
ated 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 par‐
ticularly useful when calling ssh-add from a .Xsession
or related script.
SSH_AUTH_SOCK Identifies the path of a unix-domain socket used to
communicate with the agent.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned:
0 Successful completion.
1 An error occurred.
FILES
These files should not be readable by anyone but the user. Notice that
ssh-add ignores a 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.
If these files are stored on a network file system it is assumed that
either the protection provided in the file themselves or the transport
layer of the network file system provides sufficient protection for the
site policy. If this is not the case, then it is recommended the key
files are stored on removable media or locally on the relevant hosts.
Recommended names for the DSA and RSA key files:
$HOME/.ssh/identity Contains the RSA authentication iden‐
tity of the user for protocol version
1.
$HOME/.ssh/identity.pub Contains the public part of the RSA
authentication identity of the user for
protocol version 1.
$HOME/.ssh/id_dsa Contains the private DSA authentication
identity of the user.
$HOME/.ssh/id_dsa.pub Contains the public part of the DSA
authentication identity of the user.
$HOME/.ssh/id_rsa Contains the private RSA authentication
identity of the user.
$HOME/.ssh/id_rsa.pub Contains the public part of the RSA
authentication identity of the user.
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
┌─────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┐
│ ATTRIBUTE TYPE │ ATTRIBUTE VALUE │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Availability │SUNWsshu │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Interface Stability │Evolving │
└─────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘
SEE ALSOssh(1), ssh-agent(1), ssh-keygen(1), sshd(1M), attributes(5)
To view license terms, attribution, and copyright for OpenSSH, the
default path is /var/sadm/pkg/SUNWsshdr/install/copyright. If the
Solaris operating environment has been installed anywhere other than
the default, modify the given path to access the file at the installed
location.
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, added newer features and
created Open SSH. Markus Friedl contributed the support for SSH proto‐
col versions 1.5 and 2.0.
SunOS 5.10 9 Jan 2004 ssh-add(1)
