what is ssh-sgent?

[sktsee]

On Mon, 2008-05-05 at 12:28 +0200, Kristian Rink wrote: 
> Am Sat, 03 May 2008 16:17:30 -0500
> schrieb sktsee <sktsee at tulsaconnect.com>:
> [...]
> > > > > root at monkey:~# ps ax | grep 5474
> > > > >  5474 ?        Ss
> > > > > 0:00 /usr/bin/ssh-agent /usr/bin/dbus-launch
> > > > > --exit-with-session x-session-manager 16932 pts/1    R+
> > > > > 0:00 grep 5474
> [...]
> > Actually openssh-client is part of the default desktop install. It
> > gets pulled in by ssh-askpass-gnome, which in turn was pulled in by
> > ubuntu-desktop
> 
> Stumbled across this as well earlier already. Despite knowing what
> ssh-agent mainly is used for: What's the rationale to run (local) apps
> like dbus-launch, xsessions and similar things through ssh-agent? Just
> wondering as I remember days it wasn't done this way... :)
> 

man ssh-agent

"DESCRIPTION
     ssh-agent is a program to hold private keys used for public key
authentication (RSA, DSA).  The idea is that ssh-agent is started in the
beginning of an X-session or a login session, and all other windows or
programs are started as clients to the ssh-agent program.  Through use
of environment variables the agent can be located and automatically used
for authentication when logging in to other machines using ssh(1)."

I think this has been a standard configuration on Linux and BSD variants
for a while now. It is, perhaps, not enabled by default on a few
distros, though I believe Ubuntu has always had it enabled.

-- 
sktsee