NAME¶
ssh-add
—
adds private key identities to the authentication
agent
SYNOPSIS¶
ssh-add |
[ -cDdkLlXx ]
[-t
life ]
[file ... ] |
DESCRIPTION¶
ssh-add
adds private key identities to the
authentication agent,
ssh-agent(1). 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,
ssh-add
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,
ssh-add
asks for the passphrase from the user. The passphrase is read from the user's
tty.
ssh-add
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
ssh-add
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 the
SSH_ASKPASS
program mentioned below.
Successful confirmation is signaled by a zero exit status from the
SSH_ASKPASS
program, 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
ssh-add
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,
ssh-add
will append
.pub and retry.
-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_config(5).
-X
- Unlock the agent.
-x
- Lock the agent with a password.
ENVIRONMENT¶
DISPLAY
and SSH_ASKPASS
- If
ssh-add
needs a passphrase, it will
read the passphrase from the current terminal if it was run from a
terminal. If ssh-add
does not have a
terminal associated with it but DISPLAY
and SSH_ASKPASS
are set, it will
execute the program specified by
SSH_ASKPASS
and open an X11 window to
read the passphrase. This is particularly useful when calling
ssh-add
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-domain 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
ssh-add
ignores identity files if they are
accessible by others.
EXIT STATUS¶
Exit status is 0 on success, 1 if the specified command fails, and 2 if
ssh-add
is unable to contact the
authentication agent.
SEE ALSO¶
ssh(1),
ssh-agent(1),
ssh-keygen(1),
sshd(8)
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.