ssh-add [-lLdD] [file ...]
DESCRIPTION
ssh-add adds RSA or DSA identities to the authentication agent, ssh-
agent(1). When run without arguments, it adds the files
$HOME/.ssh/id_dsa, $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa, and $HOME/.ssh/identity. Alterna
tive file names can be given on the command line. If any file requires a
passphrase, ssh-add asks for the passphrase from the user. The
Passphrase it is read from the user's tty. ssh-add retries the last
passphrase if multiple identity files are given.
The authentication agent must be running and must be an ancestor of the
current process for ssh-add to work.
The options are as follows:
-l Lists fingerprints of all identities currently represented by the
agent.
-L Lists public key parameters of all identities currently repre
sented by the agent.
-d Instead of adding the identity, removes the identity from the
agent.
-D Deletes all identities from the agent.
FILES
$HOME/.ssh/identity
Contains the protocol version 1 RSA authentication identity of
the user. This file should not be readable by anyone but the us
er. Note that ssh-add ignores this file if it is accessible by
others. It is possible to specify a passphrase when generating
the key; that passphrase will be used to encrypt the private part
of this file. This is the default file added by ssh-add when no
other files have been specified.
$HOME/.ssh/id_dsa
Contains the protocol version 2 DSA authentication identity of
the user.
$HOME/.ssh/id_rsa
Contains the protocol version 2 RSA authentication identity of
the user.
ENVIRONMENT
DISPLAY and SSH_ASKPASS
If ssh-add needs a passphrase, it will read the passphrase from
the current terminal if it was run from a terminal. If ssh-add
does not have a terminal associated with it but DISPLAY and
SSH_ASKPASS are set, it will execute the program specified by
SSH_ASKPASS and open an X11 window to read the passphrase. This
is particularly useful when calling ssh-add from a .Xsession or
related script. (Note that on some machines it may be necessary
to redirect the input from /dev/null to make this work.)
BSD Experimental September 25, 1999 2
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