Permanently add all SSH keys to ssh-agent

[svenluijten]

Note: I'm by no means an expert in any of the things I'm talking about here, I really just want it to work the way it used to. Any help is appreciated! 😄

Since a recent update, running agent to start up my SSH agent stopped working so I started poking around and I found out I have to uncomment @call "%GIT_INSTALL_ROOT%/cmd/start-ssh-agent.cmd from %CMDER_ROOT%/config/user-profile.cmd, which I did.

To my surprise, this only added my id_rsa file to the SSH agent (is this even the correct terminology?). I have 3 more of my keys in there that I would like to use without having to specify an input file (ssh -i /path/to/file ...) every time I want to establish a new SSH connection. So I guess my question is, how would I go about adding all my SSH keys to the SSH agent when cmder boots up?

[jankatins]

cmder only documents what's already available in the git package. The file is included in the git-for-windows package from the mingw packages: https://github.com/git-for-windows/MINGW-packages/blob/master/mingw-w64-git/start-ssh-agent.cmd

As far as I understand that file, it simply does a ssh-add call. According to the docs, it only auto loads certain keyfiles:

ssh-add adds private key identities to the authentication agent, ssh-agent(1). When run without arguments, it adds the files ~/.ssh/id_rsa, ~/.ssh/id_dsa, ~/.ssh/id_ecdsa and ~/.ssh/identity.

I guess one idea would be to copy the start-ssh-agent.cmd script to a user controlled place and change that line to also list all keyfiles ssh-add should load: @"!SSH_ADD!" ~/.ssh/key1 ~/.ssh/key2.

Or do a manual ssh-add ~/.ssh/your-other-key ~/.ssh/yet-another-keyfile in one session and have it available in all other cmder sessions.

Or change the start-ssh-agent script to add a way to add more than one keyfile and submit a PR there :-)

[svenluijten]

Ah that should be plenty of options to try out @JanSchulz, thanks for the reply! 😄

[jankatins]

See git-for-windows/MINGW-packages#18 for a PR adding it upstream... If that is accepted, you can set "SSH_ADD_ADDITIONAL_KEYFILES=keyfile1_rsa,keyfile2_rsa2" before the start-ssh-agent call and get you additional keys...

[svenluijten]

Awesome, thanks for that! Let's hope it gets merged 🙏

[jankatins]

@svenluijten It would be nice if you could try that PR: simply save the complete file from https://github.com/janschulz/MINGW-packages/blob/ea4dad14da8e7ad60c7b2e7eaaef9e138b7da563/mingw-w64-git/start-ssh-agent.cmd in <cmder>\bin, set the additional keyfiles, kill the ssh-agent and restart cmder (or start-ssh-agent).

[svenluijten]

@JanSchulz I'll do that once I have access to my PC at home later today 👍

[jankatins]

It seems the new git version and in particular the included openssh version has some other means to get a solution working: git-for-windows/MINGW-packages#18 (comment)

[Stanzilla]

Oh neat