Ssh – Configuring the default timeout for the SSH agent

sshssh-agent

I use ssh-add to add my SSH keys to the SSH agent. By default, it adds them indefinitely. There's a command-line option to specify a timeout, but is there a configuration file option which will specify the default timeout?

What I want is to be able to run ssh-add without any command-line parameters and have it default to a given amount of time for a timeout (as if I had called ssh-add -t 1h).

Best Answer

AFAIK, there is no configuration in sshd_config or ssh_config to specify the time out for ssh-agent. From openssh source code, file ssh-agent.c:

/* removes expired keys and returns number of seconds until the next expiry */  
static time_t                                                                   
reaper(void)                                                                    
{                                                                               
    time_t deadline = 0, now = monotime();                                      
    Identity *id, *nxt;                                                         
    int version;                                                                
    Idtab *tab;                                                                 

    for (version = 1; version < 3; version++) {                                 
        tab = idtab_lookup(version);                                            
        for (id = TAILQ_FIRST(&tab->idlist); id; id = nxt) {                    
            nxt = TAILQ_NEXT(id, next);                                         
            if (id->death == 0)                                                 
                continue;                                                       
            if (now >= id->death) {                                             
                debug("expiring key '%s'", id->comment);                        
                TAILQ_REMOVE(&tab->idlist, id, next);                           
                free_identity(id);                                              
                tab->nentries--;                                                
            } else                                                              
                deadline = (deadline == 0) ? id->death :                        
                    MIN(deadline, id->death);                                   
        }                                                                       
    }                                                                           
    if (deadline == 0 || deadline <= now)                                       
        return 0;                                                               
    else                                                                        
        return (deadline - now);                                                
}

And in process_add_identity function:

process_add_identity(SocketEntry *e, int version)                               
{
.... 
if (lifetime && !death)                                                     
        death = monotime() + lifetime;
....
}

lifetime is a global variable and only change value when parsing argument:

/* Default lifetime in seconds (0 == forever) */                                
static long lifetime = 0;

int                                                                             
main(int ac, char **av)                                                         
{
.... 
    case 't':                                                               
        if ((lifetime = convtime(optarg)) == -1) {                          
            fprintf(stderr, "Invalid lifetime\n");                          
            usage();                                                        
        }
....
}

If you use Ubuntu, you can set default options for ssh-agent in /etc/X11/Xsession.d/90x11-common_ssh-agent:

STARTSSH=
SSHAGENT=/usr/bin/ssh-agent
SSHAGENTARGS="-t 1h"

if has_option use-ssh-agent; then
  if [ -x "$SSHAGENT" ] && [ -z "$SSH_AUTH_SOCK" ] \
     && [ -z "$SSH2_AUTH_SOCK" ]; then
    STARTSSH=yes
    if [ -f /usr/bin/ssh-add1 ] && cmp -s $SSHAGENT /usr/bin/ssh-agent2; then
      # use ssh-agent2's ssh-agent1 compatibility mode
      SSHAGENTARGS=-1
    fi
  fi
fi

if [ -n "$STARTSSH" ]; then
  STARTUP="$SSHAGENT $SSHAGENTARGS ${TMPDIR:+env TMPDIR=$TMPDIR} $STARTUP"
fi
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