How to Reduce Password Prompts in Solaris Secure Shell

If you do not want to type your passphrase and your password to use Solaris Secure Shell, you can use the agent daemon. Start the daemon at the beginning of the session. Then, store your private keys with the agent daemon by using the ssh-add command. If you have different accounts on different hosts, add the keys that you need for the session.

You can start the agent daemon manually when needed, as described in the following procedure. Or, you can set the agent daemon to run automatically at the start of every session as described in How to Set Up the ssh-agent Command to Run Automatically in CDE.

1. Start the agent daemon.

   myLocalHost% eval `ssh-agent` Agent pid 9892

2. Verify that the agent daemon has been started.

   myLocalHost% pgrep ssh-agent 9892

3. Add your private key to the agent daemon.

   Type the ssh-add command.

   myLocalHost% ssh-add Enter passphrase for /home/jdoe/.ssh/id_rsa: <Type passphrase> Identity added: /home/jdoe/.ssh/id_rsa(/home/jdoe/.ssh/id_rsa) myLocalHost%

4. Start a Solaris Secure Shell session.

   myLocalHost% ssh myRemoteHost

   You are not prompted for a passphrase.

Example 19–3 Using ssh-add Options

In this example, jdoe adds two keys to the agent daemon. The -l option is used to list all keys that are stored in the daemon. At the end of the session, the -D option is used to remove all the keys from the agent daemon.

myLocalHost% ssh-agent
myLocalHost% ssh-add
Enter passphrase for /home/jdoe/.ssh/id_rsa: <Type passphrase>
Identity added: /home/jdoe/.ssh/id_rsa(/home/jdoe/.ssh/id_rsa)
myLocalHost% ssh-add /home/jdoe/.ssh/id_dsa
Enter passphrase for /home/jdoe/.ssh/id_dsa: <Type passphrase>
Identity added:
/home/jdoe/.ssh/id_dsa(/home/jdoe/.ssh/id_dsa)

myLocalHost% ssh-add -l
md5 1024 0e:fb:3d:53:71:77:bf:57:b8:eb:f7:a7:aa:df:e0:d1
/home/jdoe/.ssh/id_rsa(RSA)
md5 1024 c1:d3:21:5e:40:60:c5:73:d8:87:09:3a:fa:5f:32:53
/home/jdoe/.ssh/id_dsa(DSA)

User conducts Solaris Secure Shell transactions

myLocalHost% ssh-add -D
Identity removed:
/home/jdoe/.ssh/id_rsa(/home/jdoe/.ssh/id_rsa.pub)
/home/jdoe/.ssh/id_dsa(DSA)