SSH-ADD(1)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
is 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
identity 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 rep‐
resented by the agent.
-t life
Sets a maximum lifetime when adding identities to an agent.
The lifetime can 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
SSH_ASKPASS
If ssh-add needs a passphrase, it reads the passphrase
from the current terminal if it was run from a termi‐
nal. If ssh-add does not have a terminal associated
with it but DISPLAY and SSH_ASKPASS are set, it exe‐
cutes the program specified by SSH_ASKPASS and open an
X11 window to read the passphrase. This is particu‐
larly useful when calling ssh-add from a .Xsession or
related script. The system is shipped with
/usr/lib/ssh/ssh-askpass which is the default value
for SSH_ASKPASS.
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 is 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 identity of
the user for protocol version 1.
$HOME/.ssh/identity.pub
Contains the public part of the RSA authen‐
tication 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 authen‐
tication 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 authen‐
tication identity of the user.
/usr/lib/ssh/ssh-askpass
Contains the default value for SSH_ASKPASS.
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
┌────────────────────┬─────────────────┐
│ ATTRIBUTE TYPE │ ATTRIBUTE VALUE │
├────────────────────┼─────────────────┤
│Interface Stability │ Committed │
└────────────────────┴─────────────────┘
SEE ALSOssh(1), ssh-agent(1), ssh-keygen(1), sshd(1M), attributes(5)
May 20, 2009 SSH-ADD(1)
