ssh-add won't create indentity file

[Herbert Ho <hoherbe@charlie.cns.iit.edu>]

i played with ssh-agent a LONG time ago and wasn't impressed. but i
figured i would take another stab at it now.

so i added this line to my .bash_profile as the man page suggests:

[ ! "$SSH_AGENT_PID" ] && exec ssh-agent -- bash --login

which works great. then i tried using ssh-add.  it asked for a
passphrase.  but its been ages since i created the identity file, so i
didn't remember the passphrase.

so in a rash nature i nuked the identity file.  yeah, i know.

looking in the man page for ssh-add it states that if the identity
file doesn't exist, then it would create it. but it doesn't.  it keeps
spitting me a "bad key file" error.

so again, i rashly nuke my .ssh, saving my config this time. =)

and still ssh-add doesn't work. so i try logging out and logging back
in hoping that it was ssh-agent that was at fault. no luck.

does anyone have any clue what i can do?

also, am i suppose to run ssh-add on the remote server or on my local
machine?

thanks in advance,

herbert