Enter SSH passphrase once
Before upgrade
When I was running git clone git@... (using ssh) once per computer restart a window dialog appeared containing a textbox for inserting my SSH passphrase and confirmed with OK. Then the passphrase was no longer required until the next start of my system.
After upgrading to 13.10
After upgrading to Ubuntu 13.10 that window doesn't appear anymore but a message in terminal appears:
Enter passphrase for key '/home/username/.ssh/id_rsa':
...every time when cloning a git repository this appears.
How can I fix this? I want to enter my passphrase only once.
Solution 1:
Update: seems to be a bug from 13.10:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libpam-ssh/+bug/1247169
Anyway running the following commands the problem was fixed for me:
How to fix
I fixed this by entering the following commands:
$ ssh-agent bash
This creates a new bash process that allows you to add private keys. When adding a new private key you will be prompted for the passphrase once and only once.
And then:
$ ssh-add /home/username/.ssh/id_rsa
Enter passphrase for /home/username/.ssh/id_rsa:
Identity added: /home/username/.ssh/id_rsa (/home/username/.ssh/id_rsa)
...where username is your username. You can do the same using $USER variable:
$ ssh-add /home/$USER/.ssh/id_rsa
Alternatively, just use ~ for your home directory.
$ ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa
And the problem was fixed.
Solution 2:
0) Short answer
Use AddKeysToAgent and add the following to your .ssh/config at the beginning:
AddKeysToAgent yes
and run git/ssh/... If it's not enough, check your ssh version and check that ssh-agent is loaded with these instructions:
1) Check the openssh version
Firstly check that your ssh version, it must be greater of equal to 7.2:
ssh -V
2) Edit the config file
If it's the case just add in your .ssh/config one line at the beginning:
AddKeysToAgent yes
Other options are no (the default), yes, confirm (optionally followed by a time interval), ask or a time interval.
#3) Check if ssh-agent is already open
Usually distributions automatically load an ssh-agent. To check it, run
ps aux | grep -v grep | grep ssh-agent
If you don't see any line containing it, you need to load it by running:
eval $(ssh-agent)
Note that this enable the agent only on the current terminal, so to enable it everywhere, you can try to add this line in your ~/.profile file and reboot.