john wrote: > The following output describes my problem: > > richard@debian:~/Desktop$ ssh-add -c ~/.ssh/id_rsa > Enter passphrase for /home/richard/.ssh/id_rsa: > Bad passphrase, try again for /home/richard/.ssh/id_rsa: > > What am I doing wrong? "Bad passphrase" says that the passphrase you typed in did not match the one used on the file. They did not match. The file was not decrypted and could not be used. It failed and retried giving you the chance to try again and answer the passphrase question correctly. It asked you for the passphrase again. You need to supply the same passphrase that you used when you created the file with ssh-keygen. > I get similar response if I use ssh-keygen. ssh-keygen is used to create that file (and to manage it later) and to set a passphrase upon it. The file is encrypted so that if the file is copied (from the live file or from backup) then it can't be used without knowing the passphrase to decrypt it. If you have forgotten your passphrase and cannot remember it then there is no way to recover it. You would need to create a new key and set a new passphrase upon it. Then you would need to update all remote host locations that are using it in the ssh authorized_keys file. Bob
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