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I have a remote machine, with which I have set up public-key ssh auth - that is, I can ssh to it without typing in password each time. And I have a set of actions in a script, which use that ssh connection.

But when I run that script via cron, it keeps asking passphrase for each action - and since I have more that ten of them, it gets quite boring.

I tried running ssh-add before those actions and got:

Could not open a connection to your authentication agent.

What can I do to reduce number of passphrase retypes?

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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Rogach
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  • Did you add the cron entry to the `crontab` of the user that owns the key? That is, you didn't do something silly like add the script call to the global `crontab`, right? – Warren Young Feb 27 '12 at 17:59
  • @WarrenYoung - actually, that's exactly what I did - I just put in the name of the user that owns the key as the user to run it from :) What is wrong with it? Crontab treats these two cases different ways? – Rogach Feb 27 '12 at 18:02
  • Try running `eval $(ssh-agent -s)` before `ssh-add` (and `ssh-agent -k` at end). – enzotib Feb 27 '12 at 18:08
  • @enzotib - Thanks, it works! I assume that ssh-agent -k should also be placed into eval? – Rogach Feb 27 '12 at 18:14
  • There is a thing called "necroposting". Can we call what happened today "necromodding"? Come on, the question is 4 (!) years old, don't you have something better to do with your time? – Rogach Sep 28 '16 at 10:17

1 Answers1

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Try running 

eval $(ssh-agent -s)

before ssh-add, to export the environment variables that refer to the just started agent, then run

ssh-agent -k

(without eval) at end of script to kill the agent.

enzotib
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  • When I run a last statement without eval, it gives me back two `unset` statements and an `echo` statement. Isn't it meant to be put into eval? – Rogach Feb 27 '12 at 18:21
  • @Rogach: it is useful to run it into `eval` when your script keep doing things and you want to unset the variables, but it is not required. – enzotib Feb 27 '12 at 18:30