ssh-add (1)
Leading comments
$OpenBSD: ssh-add.1,v 1.62 2015/03/30 18:28:37 jmc Exp $
Author: Tatu Ylonen <ylo@cs.hut.fi>
Copyright (c) 1995 Tatu Ylonen <ylo@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 o...
NAME
ssh-add - adds private key identities to the authentication agentSYNOPSIS
ssh-add [-cDdkLlXx [-E fingerprint_hash ] ] [-t life ] [file ... ]
ssh-add -s pkcs11
ssh-add -e pkcs11
DESCRIPTION
adds private key identities to the authentication agent, ssh-agent1. When run without arguments, it adds the files ~/.ssh/id_rsa ~/.ssh/id_dsa ~/.ssh/id_ecdsa ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 and ~/.ssh/identity After loading a private key, will try to load corresponding certificate information from the filename obtained by appending -cert.pub to the name of the private key file. Alternative file names can be given on the command line.If any file requires a passphrase, asks for the passphrase from the user. The passphrase is read from the user's tty. retries the last passphrase if multiple identity files are given.
The authentication agent must be running and the SSH_AUTH_SOCK environment variable must contain the name of its socket for to work.
The options are as follows:
- -c
- Indicates that added identities should be subject to confirmation before being used for authentication. Confirmation is performed by ssh-askpass1. Successful confirmation is signaled by a zero exit status from ssh-askpass1, rather than text entered into the requester.
- -D
- Deletes all identities from the agent.
- -d
- Instead of adding identities, removes identities from the agent. If has been run without arguments, the keys for the default identities and their corresponding certificates will be removed. Otherwise, the argument list will be interpreted as a list of paths to public key files to specify keys and certificates to be removed from the agent. If no public key is found at a given path, will append .pub and retry.
- -E fingerprint_hash
- Specifies the hash algorithm used when displaying key fingerprints. Valid options are: ``md5'' and ``sha256'' The default is ``sha256''
- -e pkcs11
- Remove keys provided by the PKCS#11 shared library pkcs11
- -k
- When loading keys into or deleting keys from the agent, process plain private keys only and skip certificates.
- -L
- Lists public key parameters of all identities currently represented by the agent.
- -l
- Lists fingerprints of all identities currently represented by the agent.
- -s pkcs11
- Add keys provided by the PKCS#11 shared library pkcs11
- -t life
- Set a maximum lifetime when adding identities to an agent. The lifetime may be specified in seconds or in a time format specified in sshd_config5.
- -X
- Unlock the agent.
- -x
- Lock the agent with a password.
ENVIRONMENT
- DISPLAY and SSH_ASKPASS
- If needs a passphrase, it will read the passphrase from the current terminal if it was run from a terminal. If does not have a terminal associated with it but DISPLAY and SSH_ASKPASS are set, it will execute the program specified by SSH_ASKPASS (by default ``ssh-askpass'' and open an X11 window to read the passphrase. This is particularly useful when calling 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.)
- SSH_AUTH_SOCK
- Identifies the path of a UNIX socket used to communicate with the agent.
FILES
- ~/.ssh/identity
- Contains the protocol version 1 RSA authentication identity of the user.
- ~/.ssh/id_dsa
- Contains the protocol version 2 DSA authentication identity of the user.
- ~/.ssh/id_ecdsa
- Contains the protocol version 2 ECDSA authentication identity of the user.
- ~/.ssh/id_ed25519
- Contains the protocol version 2 Ed25519 authentication identity of the user.
- ~/.ssh/id_rsa
- Contains the protocol version 2 RSA authentication identity of the user.
Identity files should not be readable by anyone but the user. Note that ignores identity files if they are accessible by others.