SSH-ADD(1)
NAME
ssh-add -- adds RSA or DSA identities to the authentication agent
SYNOPSIS
ssh-add [-cDdLlXx] [-t life] [file ...] ssh-add -s pkcs11 ssh-add -e pkcs11
DESCRIPTION
ssh-add adds RSA or DSA identities to the authentication agent,
ssh-agent(1). When run without arguments, it adds the files
~/.ssh/id_rsa, ~/.ssh/id_dsa and ~/.ssh/identity. After loading a private key, ssh-add will try to load corresponding certificate information
from the filename obtained by appending -cert.pub to the name of the private key file. Alternative 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 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 the SSH_AUTH_SOCK environment variable must contain the name of its socket for ssh-add to work.
Any keys recorded in the blacklist of known-compromised keys (see
ssh-vulnkey(1)) will be refused.
The options are as follows:
- -c Indicates that added identities should be subject to confirmation
- before being used for authentication. Confirmation is performed by the SSH_ASKPASS program mentioned below. Successful confirmation is signaled by a zero exit status from the SSH_ASKPASS program, rather than text entered into the requester.
- -D Deletes all identities from the agent.
- -d Instead of adding identities, removes identities from the agent.
- If ssh-add has been run without arguments, the keys for the
default identities will be removed. Otherwise, the argument list
will be interpreted as a list of paths to public key files and
matching keys will be removed from the agent. If no public key
is found at a given path, ssh-add will append .pub and retry. - -e pkcs11
- Remove keys provided by the PKCS#11 shared library pkcs11.
- -L Lists public key parameters of all identities currently repre
- sented by the agent.
- -l Lists fingerprints of all identities currently represented by the
- agent.
- -s pkcs11
- Add keys provided by the PKCS#11 shared library pkcs11.
- -t life
- Set a maximum lifetime when adding identities to an agent. The
lifetime may be specified in seconds or in a time format specified in sshd_config(5). - -X Unlock the agent.
- -x Lock the agent with a password.
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.) - SSH_AUTH_SOCK
- Identifies the path of a UNIX-domain socket used to communicate
with the agent.
FILES
- ~/.ssh/identity
- Contains the protocol version 1 RSA authentication identity of
the user. - ~/.ssh/id_dsa
- Contains the protocol version 2 DSA authentication identity of
the user. - ~/.ssh/id_rsa
- Contains the protocol version 2 RSA authentication identity of
the user. - Identity files should not be readable by anyone but the user. Note that ssh-add ignores identity files if they are accessible by others.
DIAGNOSTICS
Exit status is 0 on success, 1 if the specified command fails, and 2 if
ssh-add is unable to contact the authentication agent.
SEE ALSO
ssh(1), ssh-agent(1), ssh-keygen(1), ssh-vulnkey(1), sshd(8)
AUTHORS
- OpenSSH is a derivative of the original and free ssh 1.2.12 release by
Tatu Ylonen. Aaron Campbell, Bob Beck, Markus Friedl, Niels Provos, Theo de Raadt and Dug Song removed many bugs, re-added newer features and created OpenSSH. Markus Friedl contributed the support for SSH protocol
versions 1.5 and 2.0.