A question about ssh-agent
Some might think I have no business wanting to know the answer
to this question, but bare with me:
Where in the start-up code of a system that is running ssh client is
the ssh-agent started? It has got to be early in the process, but
where? And what exactly is done? Should I be able to see it in an
init.d script? It is a daemon, but it is only needed to support an
add-on feature of as ssh client so it should be part of the code that
gdm/xdm runs, I suppose. Or what? There should be distinct instances
of the agent for each user, I think. Or is there a single single
instance that maintains a list of logged in users and their several
private keys? How is it really implement. I get the impression that it
is different ways on different systems. I'm only interested in the
Debian implementation (because it is the only one I can check up on)
It seems that it is not run when I log into a host using ssh or more
exactly its pid is not exported to an ssh login process. Could I add
something to the .profile script? If this is possible, it surely
has been thought of before me and better and worse ways of doing
have been discussed, but I'm not finding anything. Pointers to
HOWTOs? Is there a common name for doing this? Etc.
TIA
--
Paul E Condon
pecondon@mesanetworks.net
Reply to: