How to permanently add a private key with ssh-add on Ubuntu

Question

I have a private key protected with a password to access a server via SSH    I have 2 linux  ubuntu 10 04  machines and the behavior of ssh-add command is different in both of them    In one machine  once I use  ssh-add  ssh identity  and entered my password  the key was added permanently  i e   every time I shutdown the computer and login again  the key is already added   In the other one  I have to add the key every time I login    As far as I remember  I did the same thing on both  The only difference is that the key was created on the one that is added permanently   Does anyone know how to add it permanently to the other machine as well

User · Answer

On Ubuntu 14 04  maybe earlier  maybe still  you don t even need the console    start seahorse or launch that thing you find searching for  key  create an SSH key there  or import one   no need to leave the passphrase empty it is offered to you to even push the public key to a server  or more   you will end up with an ssh-agent running and this key loaded  but locked using ssh will pickup the identity  i e  key  through the agent on first use during the session  the passphrase will be checked  and you have the option to automatically unlock the key on login this means the login auth will be used to wrap the passphrase of the key  note  if you want to forward your identity  i e  agent-forwarding  invoke your ssh with -A or make that the default  otherwise you can t authenticate with that key on a machine you login to later to a third machine

User · Answer

In my case the solution was      Permissions on the config file should be 600  chmod 600 config   As mentioned in the comments above by  generalopinion  No need to touch the config file contents

User · Answer

Just add the keychain  as referenced in Ubuntu Quick Tips https   help ubuntu com community QuickTips  What  Instead of constantly starting up ssh-agent and ssh-add  it is possible to use keychain to manage your ssh keys  To install keychain  you can just click here  or use Synaptic to do the job or apt-get from the command line   Command line  Another way to install the file is to open the terminal  Application- Accessories- Terminal  and type   sudo apt-get install keychain   Edit File  You then should add the following lines to your   HOME   bashrc or  etc bash bashrc   keychain id rsa id dsa      keychain  uname -n -sh

User · Answer

I had the same issue on Ubuntu 16 04  some keys were added permanently  for others I had to execute ssh-add on every session  I found out that the keys which were added permanently had both private and public key located in    ssh and the keys which were forgotten on every session had only private keys in    ssh dir  So solution is simple  you should copy both private and public key to    ssh before executing ssh-add   P S   As far as I understand from Gnome wiki my method works thanks to gnome-keyring tool which is part of the Gnome Desktop Environment  Therefore my method should probably work only if you use Gnome or Gnome-based DE

User · Answer

I tried  Aaron s solution and it didn t quite work for me  because it would re-add my keys every time I opened a new tab in my terminal  So I modified it a bit note that most of my keys are also password-protected so I can t just send the output to  dev null     added keys  ssh-add -l   if       echo  added keys   grep -o -e my key     then     ssh-add   HOME  ssh my key  fi   What this does is that it checks the output of ssh-add -l which lists all keys that have been added  for a specific key and if it doesn t find it  then it adds it with ssh-add    Now the first time I open my terminal I m asked for the passwords for my private keys and I m not asked again until I reboot or logout - I haven t checked  my computer   Since I have a bunch of keys I store the output of ssh-add -l in a variable to improve performance at least I guess it improves performance       PS  I m on linux and this code went to my    bashrc file - if you are on Mac OS X  then I assume you should add it to  zshrc or  profile  EDIT  As pointed out by  Aaron in the comments  the  zshrc file is used from the zsh shell - so if you re not using that if you re not sure  then most likely  you re using bash instead   this code should go to your  bashrc file

User · Answer

Adding the following lines in     bashrc  solved the issue for me  I m using Ubuntu 14 04 desktop   eval  gnome-keyring-daemon --start  USERNAME  reynold  export SSH AUTH SOCK    ls  run user   id -u  USERNAME  keyring  ssh head -1   export SSH AGENT PID    pgrep gnome-keyring

User · Answer

For those that use Fish shell you can use the following function then call it in    config fish config fish or in a separate configuration file in    config fish conf d loadsshkeys fish  It will load all keys that start with id rsa into the ssh-agent     Load all ssh keys that start with  id rsa  function loadsshkeys   set added keys  ssh-add -l     for key in  find    ssh  -not -name    pub  -a -iname  id rsa        if test    echo  added keys   grep -o -e  key        ssh-add   key      end   end end    Call the function to run it  loadsshkeys   If you want to have the ssh-agent auto started when you open a terminal you can use tuvistavie fish-ssh-agent to do this

User · Answer

I solved that problem on Mac OSX  10 10  by using -K option for ssh-add   ssh-add -K    ssh your private key   For macOS 10 12 and later you need to additionally edit your ssh config as described here  https   github com jirsbek SSH-keys-in-macOS-Sierra-keychain

User · Answer

very simple       two steps  1 yum install keychain  2 add code below to  bash profile   usr bin keychain  HOME  ssh id dsa source  HOME  keychain  HOSTNAME-sh

User · Answer

This worked for me     ssh-agent  bin sh ssh-add  path to your key

User · Answer

This didn t answer the same issue for me under Mac OS X Lion   I ended up adding   ssh-add    ssh id rsa  amp  gt  dev null   To my  zshrc  but  profile would be fine too   which seems to have fixed it      As suggested here  http   geek michaelgrace org 2011 09 permanently-add-ssh-key-ssh-add

User · Answer

I run Ubuntu using two id rsa key s   one personal one for work    ssh-add would remember one key  personal one  and forget the company one every time   Checking out the difference between the two I saw my personal key had 400 rights while the company one had 600 rights   had u w    Removing the user write right from the company key  u-w or set to 400  fixed my problem  ssh-add now remembers both keys

User · Answer

A solution would be to force the key files to be kept permanently  by adding them in your    ssh config file   IdentityFile    ssh gitHubKey IdentityFile    ssh id rsa buhlServer   If you do not have a  config  file in the    ssh directory  then you should create one  It does not need root rights  so simply   nano    ssh config      and enter the lines above as per your requirements   For this to work the file needs to have chmod 600  You can use the command chmod 600    ssh config   If you want all users on the computer to use the key put these lines into  etc ssh ssh config and the key in a folder accessible to all   Additionally if you want to set the key specific to one host  you can do the following in your    ssh config    Host github com     User git     IdentityFile    ssh githubKey   This has the advantage when you have many identities that a server doesn t reject you because you tried the wrong identities first  Only the specific identity will be tried

[ubuntu] How to permanently add a private key with ssh-add on Ubuntu?

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