[ILUG] Passwordless SSH access

[Niall O Broin]

OK - this is what I've finally done, and It Works For Me (TM, ©). In
.bash_profile I have

------------------------------------------------------------
/usr/local/bin/ssh-agent-setup
. $HOME/.ssh/env
------------------------------------------------------------

and in .xsession I have

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#!/bin/bash
if ps aux |grep -v grep|grep -q "$USER.*ssh-agent$"; then
   . $HOME/.ssh/env
else
   ssh-agent |grep -v echo > $HOME/.ssh/env
   . $HOME/.ssh/env
   SSH_ASKPASS=/usr/lib/ssh/x11-ssh-askpass ssh-add ~/.ssh/identity
fi
startkde
eval `ssh-agent -k`
------------------------------------------------------------

/usr/local/bin/ssh-agent-setup is:

------------------------------------------------------------
#!/bin/sh
if ps aux |grep -v grep|grep -q "$USER.*ssh-agent$"; then
    exit 0
fi
ssh-agent |grep -v echo > $HOME/.ssh/env
. $HOME/.ssh/env
ssh-add ~/.ssh/identity
------------------------------------------------------------

Leaving out the $ after ssh-agent above is A Bad Thing, take it from me :-(

Of course a less stubborn person might have just renamed ssh-agent-setup :-)

Note that I've nothing in .bashrc - it's not necessary because any bash will
either be a login shell (e.g. if I ssh into the box) or will be part of an X
session, in which case it'll inherit the environment variables set in
.xsession.

If you use a different shell, make the appropriate adjustments, and you may
also want to replace startkde in .xsession with whatever it takes to start
your choice of X clients.

I posted this so that others who've been struggling with this might find it
useful, but I'd also appreciate comments from anyone who sees any glaring
holes - the above works but is by no means battle hardened.


Regards,


Niall