How to Reduce Password Prompts in Secure Shell

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If you do not want to type your passphrase and your password to use Secure Shell, you can use the agent daemon. 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.

Start the agent daemon.

mySystem$ eval `ssh-agent`
Agent pid 9892

Verify that the agent daemon has been started.
```
mySystem$ pgrep ssh-agent
9892
```

Add your private key to the agent daemon.

mySystem$ ssh-add
Enter passphrase for /home/username/.ssh/id_rsa: passphrase
Identity added: /home/username/.ssh/id_rsa(/home/username/.ssh/id_rsa)
mySystem$

Start a Secure Shell session.
```
mySystem$ ssh myRemoteSys -l username
```
You are not prompted for a passphrase.

Example 4 Using ssh-add Options

In this example, jdoe adds two keys to the agent daemon. At the end of the session, jdoe removes all the keys from the agent daemon.

mySystem$ ssh-agent
mySystem$ ssh-add
Enter passphrase for /home/jdoe/.ssh/id_rsa: passphrase
Identity added: /home/jdoe/.ssh/id_rsa(/home/jdoe/.ssh/id_rsa)
mySystem$ ssh-add /home/jdoe/.ssh/id_dsa
Enter passphrase for /home/jdoe/.ssh/id_dsa: passphrase
Identity added:
/home/jdoe/.ssh/id_dsa(/home/jdoe/.ssh/id_dsa)

mySystem$ ssh-add -l
SHA256:OX5V4xxoVozwqdZfAbykwawMuwVM+sfc+ThMeai8r9
/home/jdoe/.ssh/id_rsa(RSA)
SHA256:OX5V4xxoVozwqdZfAbykwawMuwVM+sfc+ThMeai8r9
/home/jdoe/.ssh/id_dsa(DSA)

User conducts Secure Shell transactions

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