ssh-agent 'how to start'

[Dan Matlock_1]

I must be missing something, on my linux the ssh-agent is running and not sure who/how it started (good thing), but not sure how to start the ssh-agent on HP-UX. Help!

[Marvin Strong · Accepted solution]

well assuming your sshd is running. you have your keys and everything else setup. You just run ssh-agent as yourself and add your key.

personally I have the following in my .profile so I do not need to start it manually everytime.

ssh_conf() {
if [ -f ~/.ssh/agent_env ]
then
. ~/.ssh/agent_env > /dev/null
if ! kill -0 $SSH_AGENT_PID > /dev/null 2>&1; then
echo "spawning new agent"
eval `ssh-agent | tee ~/.ssh/agent_env`
ssh-add
fi
else
echo "starting ssh-agent"
eval `ssh-agent | tee ~/.ssh/agent_env`
ssh-add
fi
}

[RAC_1]

ssh-agent??
Are you talking about sshd daemon??
On hp-ux (is you installed hp's ssh version)
it is started as follows.

/sbin/init.d/secsh start

[Alex Lavrov.]

Nice book about SSH on HP-UX:

http://docs.hp.com/en/T1471-90005/index.html


And you can download openssh also:
http://hpux.cs.utah.edu/hppd/hpux/Networking/Admin/openssh-4.1p1/

Alex.

[Mel Burslan]

I think you meant the sshd, i.e., the daemon. It starts with :

/sbin/init.d/secsh start

[Dan Matlock_1]

ssh-agent is what i want to use along with 'expect' program to pass the passphrase...

had sshd running just fine...

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Dan,

Well, starting the sshd daemon all depends on

A) Whether you're running the HP compiled / packaged version & in that case the start command given in earlier posts is correct with the caveat that it should have links from /sbin/rc3.d to auto-start it & /sbin/rc2.d to auto-stop it

B) Whether you've compiled / packaged it yourself as we do. In that case we use /sbin/init.d/sshd2 & link to it from /sbin/rc3.d/S300sshd2 for autostart at boot & from /sbin/rc2.d/K700sshd2 to stop it at shutdown.

HTH,
Jeff

[Mel Burslan]

If you just need the ssh agent to start and it is erroring out, the binary should be out of your default search path. In which case, you can start it with the full path name and it should be (under default installation circumstances that is) /opt/ssh/bin/ssh

So you can issue the command as :

/opt/ssh/bin/ssh -l remote_user remote_host -i identity_key_file

if you omit the -i option, the default identity file is either of the following

For ssh Ver. 1
$HOME/.ssh/id_rsa

For ssh Ver. 2
$HOME/.ssh/id_dsa


hope this helps

[Dan Matlock_1]

thanks for all of the input, so should the ssh-agent be running automatically? or should the .profile/user level start/stop it?

[Greg Vaidman]

Dan,
ssh-agent does not run automatically, at least with HP's installation of ssh. You'd normally run it from your .profile... Marvin (the first response above) had an excerpt from his .profile with how to implement that...
--Greg

[Alex Lavrov.]

As you can see in Marvin Strong's reply, he uses .profile for this.

Alex.

[Mel Burslan]

Dan,

The agent is not something like a daemon that runs in the background. It gets invoked as needed basis and when it completes its duty, it just exits. So, you need to make it available to your search path or assign an alias to it for quicker access if you do not want to start it with the full path name.

[Dan Matlock_1]

thanx