Talk:HOWTO ssh-agent the easy way

From Gentoo Linux Wiki

I find a nicer way to do this is below, using keychain. Make sure you have keychain emerged.

Putting it in ~/.kde/env/Keychain.sh will ensure that it is started before after your login but before the KDE session. The dcop calls will make ssh-agent available to KDE for things such as the fish:// protocol in Konqueror/other apps.

Note that you'll still need to source ~/.keychain/`hostname`-sh in your ~/.bashrc and ~/.bash_profile.

#!/bin/bash

SSH_ASKPASS="/usr/bin/x11-ssh-askpass"
# Or the below, if you use the gtk2 variant
#SSH_ASKPASS="/usr/bin/gtk2-ssh-askpass"
keychain ~/Path/To/MyKey.dsa

source ~/.keychain/`hostname`-sh

dcop klauncher klauncher setLaunchEnv SSH_AUTH_SOCK "$SSH_AUTH_SOCK"
dcop klauncher klauncher setLaunchEnv SSH_AGENT_PID "$SSH_AGENT_PID"

Perhaps somebody who knows the wiki format better than I do can wikify this and add any other comments.

Added by David Cannings

[edit] easiest way

Create a .xinitrc file w/ the following:

exec /usr/bin/ssh-agent startkde

Then, run ssh-add from a terminal once you've logged in. That's it.

[edit] easier way

I dont actually use gentoo regularly .. but I just spent a while trying to get ssh-agent working, using your info as a guide.

Somewhere else I actually found this code:

#!/bin/csh

eval `/usr/bin/ssh-agent`

dcop klauncher klauncher setLaunchEnv SSH_AGENT_PID "$SSH_AGENT_PID"

dcop klauncher klauncher setLaunchEnv SSH_AUTH_SOCK "$SSH_AUTH_SOCK"

to put into a script in ~/kde/Autostart/

and this does the job for me, and seems reasonably cross-platform and easy to setup.
Anyway, my 2c.
-David
cub1cle.com

[edit] pam_ssh and $YOUR_LOGIN_MANAGER

Benefit: Single Sign on
(ssh-agent is started in the background, works for the whole X environment)
pam_agent will decrypt your ssh key with the password provided by
$YOUR_LOGIN_MANAGER (kdm, gdm, xdm) this also logs you into your Desktop Environment

Needed changes:

 emerge -av pam_ssh
 2 new lines in /etc/pam.d/system-auth, see below.

/etc/pam.d/system-auth

 auth       required pam_env.so
 auth       sufficient /lib/security/pam_ssh.so        #new
 auth       sufficient   pam_unix.so likeauth nullok
 auth       required pam_deny.so

 account    required pam_unix.so

 password   required pam_cracklib.so difok="2" minlen=8 dcredit=2 ocredit=2 retry=3
 password   sufficient   pam_unix.so nullok md5 shadow use_authtok
 password   required pam_deny.so

 session    required pam_limits.so
 session  sufficient /lib/security/pam_ssh.so #new
 session    required pam_unix.so

the two lines marked with #new at the end are the only needed changes on my default system-auth file.

Metalfan 07:18, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Gnome

Is there a way to do this under GNOME? --Huwawa 21:06, 27 July 2007 (UTC)