RE: ssh-agent and ssh-add automatically

Hmmm. How about have a system startup script do something like this:

for USERS in ddanovich rwilson etc
do
 su - $USERS -c "ssh-agent | head -2 > /home/$USERS/.ssh/.ssh-agent.dat" done

Modify .bashrc as mentioned earlier.

A ssh-add will have to be done once per user per reboot but that's better than nothing.

--Ray

P.S. I haven't tried the above script. Use at your own risk. Mileage may vary. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer...

-----Original Message-----

From: Wilson, Richard E [mailto:richard.wilson@eds.com] Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2002 2:59 PM To: 'David Danovich'; secureshell@securityfocus.com Subject: RE: ssh-agent and ssh-add automatically

David,

Do you need help?

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You can get away with doing this once every time the system boots, but it still has to be done. Here's how (also using RH 7.3):

ssh-agent | head -2 > $HOME/.ssh-agent.dat ssh-add

Then add the following to your .bashrc (assuming you're using bash):

if [ -f $HOME/.ssh-agent.dat ]; then
  . $HOME/.ssh-agent.dat
fi

You can of course create a system startup script to handle this, but it will have to have the individual ID's pass phrases available to it somehow and has to run as the ID that will be using the agent. Has anyone out there created a secure solution to that one?

Richard Wilson

-----Original Message-----

From: David Danovich [mailto:David.Danovich@huji.ac.il] Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2002 2:49 AM To: secureshell@securityfocus.com
Subject: ssh-agent and ssh-add automatically

Hi,

Do you need more help?

In addition to our free technical library, Pantek provides professional IT services to companies who utilize Open Source software: Learn more about Pantek's Technical Support offerings Place an order for 24/7/365 Technical Support here Learn more about Pantek, who we are, and what we do Chat with a Live Operator Related securityfocus.com Links bugtraq certification focus-bsd focus-ids focus-ih focus-linux focus-ms focus-sun focus-unix-other focus-virus forensics incidents libnet linux-secnews ms-secnews pen-test secpapers secprog sectools secureshell security-basics securityjobs sf-news vuln-dev webappsec Request more information about Pantek

I have a linux cluster (RedHat 7.3) with 4 linux boxes. In order for ssh to operate without password I seted up private authentication keys using ssh-keygen -t rsa command. Created authorized_keys and known_hosts files and everything works fine. The problem is that every time I open a new window or start a new session I have to carry out several commands in order to use this ssh without password. The commands I need to do is following

 ssh-agent $SHELL
ssh-add

I also need to write my passphrase and only after this procedure I am able do carry out any command on any nodes directly from server without typing password or passphrase. (For example, command like ssh -n har3 date). Har3 is the name of one of the node.

What I want is to skip this procedure with ssh-agent and ssh-add commands. Is it possible to modify some configuration files of ssh so that I would be able to carry out command on nodes when I write it actually on server (like above command ssh -n har3 date) directly when I start a new session without ssh-agent and ssh-add commands.

Thank you in advance David Received on Thu Dec 19 11:15:58 2002