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SSH-ADD(1)                               BSD General Commands Manual                              SSH-ADD(1)

NAME
     ssh-add -- adds RSA or DSA identities to the authentication agent

SYNOPSIS
     ssh-add [-cDdLlXxKk] [-t life] [file ...]
     ssh-add -s reader
     ssh-add -e reader

DESCRIPTION
     ssh-add adds RSA or DSA identities to the authentication agent, ssh-agent(1).  When run without argu-ments, arguments,
     ments, it adds the files ~/.ssh/id_rsa, ~/.ssh/id_dsa and ~/.ssh/identity.  Alternative file names can
     be given on the command line.  If any file requires a passphrase, ssh-add asks for the passphrase from
     the user.  The passphrase is read from the user's tty.  ssh-add retries the last passphrase if multiple
     identity files are given.

     The authentication agent must be running and the SSH_AUTH_SOCK environment variable must contain the
     name of its socket for ssh-add to work.

     The options are as follows:

     -c      Indicates that added identities should be subject to confirmation before being used for authen-tication. authentication.
             tication.  Confirmation is performed by the SSH_ASKPASS program mentioned below.  Successful
             confirmation is signaled by a zero exit status from the SSH_ASKPASS program, rather than text
             entered into the requester.

     -D      Deletes all identities from the agent.

     -d      Instead of adding identities, removes identities from the agent.  If ssh-add has been run with-out without
             out arguments, the keys for the default identities will be removed.  Otherwise, the argument
             list will be interpreted as a list of paths to public key files and matching keys will be
             removed from the agent.  If no public key is found at a given path, ssh-add will append .pub
             and retry.

     -e reader
             Remove key in smartcard reader.

     -L      Lists public key parameters of all identities currently represented by the agent.

     -l      Lists fingerprints of all identities currently represented by the agent.

     -s reader
             Add key in smartcard reader.

     -t life
             Set a maximum lifetime when adding identities to an agent.  The lifetime may be specified in
             seconds or in a time format specified in sshd_config(5).

     -X      Unlock the agent.

     -x      Lock the agent with a password.

     -K      When adding identities, each passphrase will also be stored in your keychain.  When removing
             identities with -d, each passphrase will be removed from your keychain.

     -k      Add identities to the agent using any passphrases stored in your keychain.

ENVIRONMENT
     DISPLAY and SSH_ASKPASS
             If ssh-add needs a passphrase, it will read the passphrase from the current terminal if it was
             run from a terminal.  If ssh-add does not have a terminal associated with it but DISPLAY and
             SSH_ASKPASS are set, it will execute the program specified by SSH_ASKPASS and open an X11 win-dow window
             dow to read the passphrase.  This is particularly useful when calling ssh-add from a .xsession
             or related script.  (Note that on some machines it may be necessary to redirect the input from
             /dev/null to make this work.)

     SSH_AUTH_SOCK
             Identifies the path of a unix-domain socket used to communicate with the agent.

FILES
     ~/.ssh/identity
             Contains the protocol version 1 RSA authentication identity of the user.

     ~/.ssh/id_dsa
             Contains the protocol version 2 DSA authentication identity of the user.

     ~/.ssh/id_rsa
             Contains the protocol version 2 RSA authentication identity of the user.

     Identity files should not be readable by anyone but the user.  Note that ssh-add ignores identity files
     if they are accessible by others.

DIAGNOSTICS
     Exit status is 0 on success, 1 if the specified command fails, and 2 if ssh-add is unable to contact
     the authentication agent.

SEE ALSO
     ssh(1), ssh-agent(1), ssh-keygen(1), sshd(8)

AUTHORS
     OpenSSH is a derivative of the original and free ssh 1.2.12 release by Tatu Ylonen.  Aaron Campbell,
     Bob Beck, Markus Friedl, Niels Provos, Theo de Raadt and Dug Song removed many bugs, re-added newer
     features and created OpenSSH.  Markus Friedl contributed the support for SSH protocol versions 1.5 and
     2.0.

BSD                                             May 12, 2010                                             BSD