[conspire] ssh-agent and ssh-askpass [Re: Two technical questions]

[Tony Godshall]

...
> ...  It's a lot like the ssh agent you get for free in GNOME. ...
>

Actually, ssh-agent is part of ssh, and is generally started by the
display manager (e.g. gdm).  Often X itself is a subprocess of
ssh-agent.  The interactive popup is provided by ssh-askpass, if
installed.  The commandline equivalent is ssh-add.

In general, I've found that functionality exists in almost any Linux
distro with a graphical login screen.  And some of the light ones that
boot straight into a user session too.  The only time I've not had
ssh-agent was when I had setups to log in with text mode or
memory-only VNC server and then do an xinit or startx- in those cases
I had to do it manually (e.g. $(eval ssh-agent -t 900) ) or add it to
my ~/.xinitrc or ~/.vnc/xstartup IIRC.

Tony