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Bug#531069: document ssh-add unexplained behaviors



Package: openssh-client
Version: 1:5.1p1-5+b1
Severity: wishlist
File: /usr/share/man/man1/ssh-add.1.gz

The man page says
DESCRIPTION
     ssh-add adds RSA or DSA identities to the authentication agent, ssh-agent(1).  When run without arguments, 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.
All I know is
$ cp -a .ssh /tmp
$ ssh-add
Identity added: /home/jidanni/.ssh/id_rsa (/home/jidanni/.ssh/id_rsa)
$ diff -r .ssh /tmp/.ssh/ #So we see that it did not add anything after all!
$ mv .ssh .sshN
$ ssh-add #exits 1, with no error message
$ diff -r .ssh /tmp/.ssh/
diff: .ssh: No such file or directory #so we see that it does nothing.

The above three #commented behaviors need to be mentioned on the man
page. Nowhere did it exit 2, even though I never did /etc/init.d/ssh
start, if that is the agent it is talking about.



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