Author: Tatu Ylonen <ylo (at] cs.hut.fi>
Copyright (c) 1995 Tatu Ylonen <ylo (at] cs.hut.fi>, Espoo, Finland
All rights reserved
As far as I am concerned, the code I have written for this software
can be used freely for any purpose. Any derived versions of this
software must be clearly marked as such, and if the derived work is
incompatible with the protocol description in the RFC file, it must be
called by a name other than "ssh" or "Secure Shell".
Copyright (c) 1999,2000 Markus Friedl. All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 1999 Aaron Campbell. All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 1999 Theo de Raadt. All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
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1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
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.Dd $Mdocdate: November 21 2010 $ .Dt SSH-AGENT 1 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm ssh-agent .Nd authentication agent .Sh SYNOPSIS .Nm ssh-agent .Op Fl c | s .Op Fl d .Op Fl a Ar bind_address .Op Fl t Ar life .Op Ar command Op Ar arg ... .Nm ssh-agent .Op Fl c | s .Fl k .Sh DESCRIPTION .Nm is a program to hold private keys used for public key authentication (RSA, DSA, ECDSA). The idea is that .Nm is started in the beginning of an X-session or a login session, and all other windows or programs are started as clients to the ssh-agent program. Through use of environment variables the agent can be located and automatically used for authentication when logging in to other machines using .Xr ssh 1 .
p The options are as follows: l -tag -width Ds t Fl a Ar bind_address Bind the agent to the x Ns -domain socket .Ar bind_address . The default is
a $TMPDIR/ssh-XXXXXXXXXX/agent.\*(Ltppid\*(Gt . t Fl c Generate C-shell commands on .Dv stdout . This is the default if .Ev SHELL looks like it's a csh style of shell. t Fl d Debug mode. When this option is specified .Nm will not fork. t Fl k Kill the current agent (given by the .Ev SSH_AGENT_PID environment variable). t Fl s Generate Bourne shell commands on .Dv stdout . This is the default if .Ev SHELL does not look like it's a csh style of shell. t Fl t Ar life Set a default value for the maximum lifetime of identities added to the agent. The lifetime may be specified in seconds or in a time format specified in .Xr sshd_config 5 . A lifetime specified for an identity with .Xr ssh-add 1 overrides this value. Without this option the default maximum lifetime is forever. .El
p If a commandline is given, this is executed as a subprocess of the agent. When the command dies, so does the agent.
p The agent initially does not have any private keys. Keys are added using .Xr ssh-add 1 . When executed without arguments, .Xr ssh-add 1 adds the files
a ~/.ssh/identity . If the identity has a passphrase, .Xr ssh-add 1 asks for the passphrase on the terminal if it has one or from a small X11 program if running under X11. If neither of these is the case then the authentication will fail. It then sends the identity to the agent. Several identities can be stored in the agent; the agent can automatically use any of these identities. c ssh-add -l displays the identities currently held by the agent.
p The idea is that the agent is run in the user's local PC, laptop, or terminal. Authentication data need not be stored on any other machine, and authentication passphrases never go over the network. However, the connection to the agent is forwarded over SSH remote logins, and the user can thus use the privileges given by the identities anywhere in the network in a secure way.
p There are two main ways to get an agent set up: The first is that the agent starts a new subcommand into which some environment variables are exported, eg .Cm ssh-agent xterm & . The second is that the agent prints the needed shell commands (either .Xr sh 1 or .Xr csh 1 syntax can be generated) which can be evaluated in the calling shell, eg .Cm eval `ssh-agent -s` for Bourne-type shells such as .Xr sh 1 or .Xr ksh 1 and .Cm eval `ssh-agent -c` for .Xr csh 1 and derivatives.
p Later .Xr ssh 1 looks at these variables and uses them to establish a connection to the agent.
p The agent will never send a private key over its request channel. Instead, operations that require a private key will be performed by the agent, and the result will be returned to the requester. This way, private keys are not exposed to clients using the agent.
p A x Ns -domain socket is created and the name of this socket is stored in the .Ev SSH_AUTH_SOCK environment variable. The socket is made accessible only to the current user. This method is easily abused by root or another instance of the same user.
p The .Ev SSH_AGENT_PID environment variable holds the agent's process ID.
p The agent exits automatically when the command given on the command line terminates. .Sh FILES l -tag -width Ds t Pa ~/.ssh/identity Contains the protocol version 1 RSA authentication identity of the user. t Pa ~/.ssh/id_dsa Contains the protocol version 2 DSA authentication identity of the user. t Pa ~/.ssh/id_ecdsa Contains the protocol version 2 ECDSA authentication identity of the user. t Pa ~/.ssh/id_rsa Contains the protocol version 2 RSA authentication identity of the user. t Pa $TMPDIR/ssh-XXXXXXXXXX/agent.\*(Ltppid\*(Gt x Ns -domain sockets used to contain the connection to the authentication agent. These sockets should only be readable by the owner. The sockets should get automatically removed when the agent exits. .El .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr ssh 1 , .Xr ssh-add 1 , .Xr ssh-keygen 1 , .Xr sshd 8 .Sh 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.
