Proper way to use 'ssh-agent' and 'ssh-add' ?

[Christopher Browne]

On 2/4/06, William Park <opengeometry-FFYn/CNdgSA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> What is proper way to use 'ssh-agent' and 'ssh-add'?
>
> Manpage says, 'ssh-agent' is to be run within login console, like
>     eval `ssh-agent -s`
> and killed with
>     eval `ssh-agent -s -k`
> If I put that in ~/.profile, then I have to type my passphrase on every
> login console or xterm.  Very painful.
>
> I would like to run 'ssh-add' once, either at console or Xterm; and,
> after that, all my ssh activities should lookup 'ssh-agent', whether I'm
> at virtual consoles or Xterms.

Well, if I just plain run ssh-agent, I see the following output:
cbbrowne at knuth:~> ssh-agent
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/ssh-hIgcV30176/agent.30176; export SSH_AUTH_SOCK;
SSH_AGENT_PID=30177; export SSH_AGENT_PID;
echo Agent pid 30177;

Presumably, if I put those values into the environments of other shell
instances, then ssh, when invoked from those other shells, would be
able to access the ssh-agent running on PID 30177.

If I run the agent from the login shell, and invoke everything else
from that, those environment values would automatically be passed on,
and so, ssh-add would only need to get run once, *anywhere*.

I think, by putting the bald ssh-agent command into $HOME/.profile,
you're invoking it anew each time you start a new shell.  You probably
need to instead check to see if SSH_AGENT_PID is set, and only invoke
it if there isn't already an ssh-agent running.

It might work out better if you put the command in $HOME/.bash_login;
that is not invoked for each new shell that you spawn...
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