what is ssh-sgent?

[John K Masters]

On 20:50 Sat 03 May     , andy baxter wrote:
> John K Masters wrote:
> > On 20:11 Sat 03 May     , andy baxter wrote:
> >   
> >> Hello,
> >>
> >> Could someone tell me what ssh-agent is? I have the following process 
> >> running on my computer, and I'm not sure what it does:
> >>
> >
> > If you have not explicitly installed ssh on your machine (IIRC it is not
> > installed by default) then I would look closely at the possibility your
> > machine has been compromised. However, depending on what applications
> > you have installed, ssh may have been pulled in as a dependancy.
> >
> >   
> I sometimes ssh to a local machine on my network (a small web server), 
> so it's possible this is kosher. I haven't done this since I booted up 
> though, and that machine isn't even switched on at the moment. The 
> program doesn't seem to have any open sockets at the moment:
> root at monkey:~# netstat --program | grep ssh
> root at monkey:~#
> 

Shouldn't be a problem then. I use ssh-agent every day to manage a
remote server. It allows me to disable password access to, hopefully,
foil the dozen or so attempts per day to break into the server. Also
root login disabled. 

If your server is not out there on the web then you almost certainly
have nothing to worry about.

-- 
Wisdom is divided into two parts 
  1.  Having a great deal to say
  2.  Not saying it
Regards, John