SSH configuration questions

[Matthew Hawkins]

Brad Hards (bhards at bigpond.net.au) wrote:
> All seems to be working well, except for getting ssh-add to
> run automatically. I use KDE, and I can make it work by running
> xterm -e ssh-add from .xsessions.
> 
> But that isn't very cool (because I get this xterm between logging
> in and my session-proper starting).

Why run it in the xterm at all?

--- BEGIN QUOTE ssh-add(1) ---
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 window 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.)
--- END QUOTE ---

I haven't come across any fairly recent Linux distribution that doesn't
automatically do this in the system-wide Xsession anyway (and OpenBSD
does it too, I used to port their X11 scripts to FreeBSD to get the same
functionality).  Ooh, mind you, that was with xdm not kdm.  But still,
the concept is the same.

-- 
Matt
"So, logically, if she weighs the same as a duck, she's made of wood, and therefore a witch!"
(Monty Python and the Holy Grail)