1 SSH-ADD(1) OpenBSD Reference Manual SSH-ADD(1)
4 ssh-add - adds RSA or DSA identities to the authentication agent
7 ssh-add [-cDdLlXx] [-t life] [file ...]
12 ssh-add adds RSA or DSA identities to the authentication agent,
13 ssh-agent(1). When run without arguments, it adds the files
14 ~/.ssh/id_rsa, ~/.ssh/id_dsa and ~/.ssh/identity. Alternative file names
15 can be given on the command line. If any file requires a passphrase,
16 ssh-add asks for the passphrase from the user. The passphrase is read
17 from the user's tty. ssh-add retries the last passphrase if multiple
18 identity files are given.
20 The authentication agent must be running and the SSH_AUTH_SOCK environ-
21 ment variable must contain the name of its socket for ssh-add to work.
23 The options are as follows:
25 -c Indicates that added identities should be subject to confirmation
26 before being used for authentication. Confirmation is performed
27 by the SSH_ASKPASS program mentioned below. Successful confirma-
28 tion is signaled by a zero exit status from the SSH_ASKPASS pro-
29 gram, rather than text entered into the requester.
31 -D Deletes all identities from the agent.
33 -d Instead of adding identities, removes identities from the agent.
34 If ssh-add has been run without arguments, the keys for the de-
35 fault identities will be removed. Otherwise, the argument list
36 will be interpreted as a list of paths to public key files and
37 matching keys will be removed from the agent. If no public key
38 is found at a given path, ssh-add will append .pub and retry.
41 Remove key in smartcard reader.
43 -L Lists public key parameters of all identities currently repre-
46 -l Lists fingerprints of all identities currently represented by the
50 Add key in smartcard reader.
53 Set a maximum lifetime when adding identities to an agent. The
54 lifetime may be specified in seconds or in a time format speci-
55 fied in sshd_config(5).
59 -x Lock the agent with a password.
62 DISPLAY and SSH_ASKPASS
63 If ssh-add needs a passphrase, it will read the passphrase from
64 the current terminal if it was run from a terminal. If ssh-add
65 does not have a terminal associated with it but DISPLAY and
66 SSH_ASKPASS are set, it will execute the program specified by
67 SSH_ASKPASS and open an X11 window to read the passphrase. This
68 is particularly useful when calling ssh-add from a .xsession or
69 related script. (Note that on some machines it may be necessary
70 to redirect the input from /dev/null to make this work.)
73 Identifies the path of a unix-domain socket used to communicate
78 Contains the protocol version 1 RSA authentication identity of
82 Contains the protocol version 2 DSA authentication identity of
86 Contains the protocol version 2 RSA authentication identity of
89 Identity files should not be readable by anyone but the user. Note that
90 ssh-add ignores identity files if they are accessible by others.
93 Exit status is 0 on success, 1 if the specified command fails, and 2 if
94 ssh-add is unable to contact the authentication agent.
97 ssh(1), ssh-agent(1), ssh-keygen(1), sshd(8)
100 OpenSSH is a derivative of the original and free ssh 1.2.12 release by
101 Tatu Ylonen. Aaron Campbell, Bob Beck, Markus Friedl, Niels Provos, Theo
102 de Raadt and Dug Song removed many bugs, re-added newer features and cre-
103 ated OpenSSH. Markus Friedl contributed the support for SSH protocol
104 versions 1.5 and 2.0.
106 OpenBSD 4.6 June 12, 2007 2