Ubuntu – Use gnome-keyring as ssh agent instead of openssh

16.04gnome-keyringkdessh-agent

I want to use gnome-keyring in KDE to provide access to ssh passphrases. It is unlocked properly on login and the ssh agent socket is there. My problem is that the openSSH ssh-agent shadows this. Apparently the KDE session is started with ssh-agent

$ ps aux | grep ssh-agent
beaujean  2029  0.0  0.0  11140   316 ?        Ss   11:22   0:00 /usr/bin/ssh-agent /usr/bin/dbus-launch --exit-with-session /usr/bin/im-launch /usr/bin/startkde

Then in the kde session, 

SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/ssh-Jv2eneUNSlQ6/agent.3739;

the ssh-agent is empty, and I'm prompted for my password. Incidentally, the gnome-keyring ssh socket is active, too

$ ss -xl | grep ssh
u_str  LISTEN     0      128    /run/user/1000/keyring/ssh 25108       * 0
u_str  LISTEN     0      128    /tmp/ssh-Jv2eneUNSlQ6/agent.3739 36471      * 0

I can manually switch the socket

export SSH_AUTH_SOCK=`ss -xl | grep -o '/run/user/1000/keyring/ssh'`

and access to the ssh key w/o password works in this shell. How do I achieve this for the entire KDE session on startup? There are several questions around on how to achieve the opposite; i.e., prevent gnome-keyring from overwriting the ssh-agent. For me, it unfortunately doesn't overwrite SSH_AUTH_SOCK. Perhaps if I could avoid kde being started by ssh-agent, things would be fine but I don't know at what point of the start-up process this command 

/usr/bin/ssh-agent /usr/bin/dbus-launch --exit-with-session /usr/bin/im-launch /usr/bin/startkde

is executed

Best Answer

I didn't really find a solution, others had the same question on the KDE forum but a simple workaround is to set the ssh agent in .profile

export SSH_AUTH_SOCK=`ss -xl | grep -o '/run/user/1000/keyring/ssh'`

this is not overwritten by the rest of the start-up procedures and at least sets it correctly in a (startup) shell. In the rest of window system, it's still the other ssh agent, unfortunately.

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