keychain fails without ksshaskpass

Hello,

I used to have installed in my system the ksshaskpass application, but I removed it.
Since its removal keychain doesn’t authenticate my ssh key.

this is the context of my .bashrc

if  "$(id -u)" == "1000" ]; then
   /usr/bin/keychain ~/.ssh/id_rsa
  source ~/.keychain/$HOSTNAME-sh > /dev/null
fi

and this is the output from every new terminal,

  • keychain 2.7.1 ~ Funtoo Linux
  • Found existing ssh-agent: 1807
  • Found existing gpg-agent: 1833
  • Adding 1 ssh key(s): /home/tsiapaliokas/.ssh/id_rsa
  • Error: Problem adding; giving up

in my box I am running openSUSE 12.2

thanks in advance

I don’t use keychain (or ksshaskpass), so this might be a little off.

My recollection is that “ksshaskpass” keeps a copy of your passphrase in kdewallet. If you attempt to add a key, and ksshaskpass is there, it will provide the passphrase for you. Because you have removed that, you have to run “ssh-add” to load the key yourself.

With keychain (which I have never used), my understanding is that it starts an ssh-agent that will survive beyond login/logout. So, once you have added a key, it will be there until reboot. But you need a way of adding the key the first time. My guess is that the best way to use keychain would be to login to a virtual terminal (CTL-ALT-F1) after rebooting, and manually add a key there. Then the keychain entry in your “.bashrc” should make that key available to all future login sessions, including to all desktop applications, until the next boot.

Personally, I am happy with having a key that only lasts for my desktop session. KDE starts ssh-agent automatically, I think because it observes that I have a “.ssh” directory. I run “ssh-add” at the beginning of my session, and type in the passphrase. I don’t want to automate it too much, because I might forget the passphrase if I never have to type it in.