A very nice and comprehensive, yet simple introduction to ssh-agent. Do you have tips on how to start ssh-agent automatically when the system starts up, with the ssh-agent environment variables visible to everyone? I have a FreeBSD box running KDM on boot. Also, can I link to this page from withi...

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the command "ssh-agent -d filename" should be "ssh-add -d filename"...

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You say:

"If you know you want to use password authentication, you can prevent SSH from offering keys at all by temporarily disabling your SSH_AUTH_SOCK envorionment variable"

I'm not sure that's quite true. From some testing, it seems the only effect that has is to temporarily disable the agen...

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Thanks for this post! Clear and well written, very useful....

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I ran into the too-many keys problem a while back. I currently have 15, but hit the limit on several servers when their keys were pushed beyond 6th in the list. The workaround is to use IdentityFile to specify which key you want to use for the server. In ~/.ssh/config:

Host example.com

IdentityF...

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As described as workaround in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openssh/+bug/309160 Setting IdentitiesOnly yes in ~/.ssh/config worked for me when I had "Too Many Agent Keys?" ...

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Do you have to run this process every time you restart a session? I'm using cygwin for my SSH script and with each new session the last ssh-agent I created becomes unusable. Will this become a problem if I created to many or will the agents expire after time? Also, is there a way to keep these ag...

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