$Mdocdate: June 12 2007 $ SSH-ADD 1

### NAME

ssh-add - adds RSA or DSA identities to the authentication agent

### SYNOPSIS

ssh-add [-cDdLlXx] [-t life] [] ssh-add -s reader ssh-add -e reader

### DESCRIPTION

ssh-add adds RSA or DSA identities to the authentication agent, ssh-agent(1). When run without arguments, it adds the files ```~/.ssh/id_rsa`, ```~/.ssh/id_dsa` and ```~/.ssh/identity`. Alternative file names can be given on the command line. If any file requires a passphrase, ssh-add asks for the passphrase from the user. The passphrase is read from the user's tty. ssh-add retries the last passphrase if multiple identity files are given.

The authentication agent must be running and the ```SSH_AUTH_SOCK` environment variable must contain the name of its socket for ssh-add to work.

The options are as follows:

-c
  Indicates that added identities should be subject to confirmation before being used for authentication. Confirmation is performed by the ```SSH_ASKPASS` program mentioned below. Successful confirmation is signaled by a zero exit status from the ```SSH_ASKPASS` program, rather than text entered into the requester.

-D
  Deletes all identities from the agent.

-d
  Instead of adding identities, removes identities from the agent. If ssh-add has been run without arguments, the keys for the default identities will be removed. Otherwise, the argument list will be interpreted as a list of paths to public key files and matching keys will be removed from the agent. If no public key is found at a given path, ssh-add will append ```.pub` and retry.

-e reader
  Remove key in smartcard reader.

-L
  Lists public key parameters of all identities currently represented by the agent.

-l
  Lists fingerprints of all identities currently represented by the agent.

-s reader
  Add key in smartcard reader.

-t life
  Set a maximum lifetime when adding identities to an agent. The lifetime may be specified in seconds or in a time format specified in sshd_config(5).

-X
  Unlock the agent.

-x
  Lock the agent with a password.

### ENVIRONMENT

```DISPLAY` `and` `SSH_ASKPASS`
  If ssh-add needs a passphrase, it will read the passphrase from the current terminal if it was run from a terminal. If ssh-add does not have a terminal associated with it but ```DISPLAY` and ```SSH_ASKPASS` are set, it will execute the program specified by ```SSH_ASKPASS` and open an X11 window to read the passphrase. This is particularly useful when calling ssh-add from a ```.xsession` or related script. (Note that on some machines it may be necessary to redirect the input from ```/dev/null` to make this work.)

```SSH_AUTH_SOCK`
  Identifies the path of a unix-domain socket used to communicate with the agent.

### FILES

```~/.ssh/identity`
  Contains the protocol version 1 RSA authentication identity of the user.

```~/.ssh/id_dsa`
  Contains the protocol version 2 DSA authentication identity of the user.

```~/.ssh/id_rsa`
  Contains the protocol version 2 RSA authentication identity of the user.

Identity files should not be readable by anyone but the user. Note that ssh-add ignores identity files if they are accessible by others.

### DIAGNOSTICS

Exit status is 0 on success, 1 if the specified command fails, and 2 if ssh-add is unable to contact the authentication agent.

### SEE ALSO

ssh(1), ssh-agent(1), ssh-keygen(1), sshd(8)

### AUTHORS

OpenSSH is a derivative of the original and free ssh 1.2.12 release by Tatu Ylonen. Aaron Campbell, Bob Beck, Markus Friedl, Niels Provos, Theo de Raadt and Dug Song removed many bugs, re-added newer features and created OpenSSH. Markus Friedl contributed the support for SSH protocol versions 1.5 and 2.0.