SSH-ADD

Section: User Commands (1)
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BSD mandoc

NAME

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

SYNOPSIS

ssh-add [-lLdDxX ] [-t life ] [file ... ]
ssh-add -s reader
ssh-add -e reader

DESCRIPTION

ssh-add adds RSA or DSA identities to the authentication agent, ssh-agent1. When run without arguments, it adds the files $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa $HOME/.ssh/id_dsa and $HOME/.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 must be an ancestor of the current process for ssh-add to work.

The options are as follows:

-l: Lists fingerprints of all identities currently represented by the agent.
-L: Lists public key parameters of all identities currently represented by the agent.
-d: Instead of adding the identity, removes the identity from the agent.
-D: Deletes all identities from the agent.
-x: Lock the agent with a password.
-X: Unlock the agent.
-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(8).
-s reader: Add key in smartcard reader
-e reader: Remove key in smartcard reader

FILES

$HOME/.ssh/identity: Contains the protocol version 1 RSA authentication identity of the user.
$HOME/.ssh/id_dsa: Contains the protocol version 2 DSA authentication identity of the user.
$HOME/.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.

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.

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.

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.

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 15:04:19 GMT, May 08, 2025