History: Automatic ssh-agent management

Source of version: 2 (current)

Managing ssh-agent / ssh-add is a pain. If you slap the following into your ~/.bashrc (or equivalent): {CODE(caption="Easy ssh-agent / ssh-add system",wrap="0",ishtml="0")}AGENT_FILE=$HOME/.ssh/ssh_agent test -e $AGENT_FILE && . $AGENT_FILE test -n "$SSH_AGENT_PID" && ps --no-headers -f -p $SSH_AGENT_PID | grep -E "^$USER.*ssh-agent$" >/dev/null if [ $? -gt 0 ] then ssh-agent | grep -v echo > $AGENT_FILE fi . $AGENT_FILE ssh-add -l >/dev/null if [ $? -gt 0 ] then ssh-add fi {CODE} It'll start the ssh-agent if it's not already running, check to see if you have any keys loaded, and if not will prompt you to load your default identity. Once loaded, you can logout, or login multiple times and you'll always have your identity associated with your session. The persistence is handled through the $AGENT_FILE. Should ssh-agent die or the system reboot, everything will work as you'd expect it to (ie: start new ssh-agent, prompt to load identity again).

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