Developer : Instructions for Using an SSH Agent

This page is somewhere to gather good instructions or to write up setup instructions for using an SSH agent on various operating systems.

This document is probably going to require construction by the LBackup team. However, the following links contain tutorials or other helpful information currently available on then internet.

• Alternative to SSH Agent

• Good background and information on the built in keychain agent bundled with Mac OS 10.5.x
• Discussion of 10.5.x keychain vs sshkeychain
• Discussion of Adding the SSH_AUTH_SOCK command to cron or LaunchD jobs (not fantastic)

The command listed below may be an possible (although not fantastic) way of determining the SSH Agent socket for the default ssh-agent which is installed on Mac OS 10.5.x. This solution is obviously not ideal. However, it works and that counts for something.

username=`whoami` ; export SSH_AUTH_SOCK=`ls -l /tmp/launch-*/Listeners | grep ${username} | awk '{ print $9 }' | head -n 1`

• ssh-agent on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
• ssh-agent on Mac OS X
• SSH in Mac OS X