Currently, I have commands to start the SSH agent in my .bashrc file. The trouble is that this only works in a particular terminal – each time I open a terminal, I'm asked for my private key's passphrase.
Is there a way to open the SSH agent so that it can be used for multiple terminals without having to re-enter the passphrase each time?
Best Answer
The agent to use is determined by
SSH_AUTH_SOCK
environment variable (and the agent process itself - bySSH_AGENT_PID
), so you can save those to files in your startup scripts (execute ssh-agent in them as intended user) and pass to login shells in .bashrc script. This will give you not system-wide, but user-wide agent. Also if you use X on this machine, you can add ssh-agent to the terminal which starts X, the variables will be inherited by shells called from X. Your question doesn't specify enough details of your environment to be more specific.