SSH-ADD(1)                                         BSD General Commands Manual                                        SSH-ADD(1)

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

SYNOPSIS
     ssh-add [-cDdLlXx] [-t life] [file ...]
     ssh-add -s pkcs11
     ssh-add -e pkcs11

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.  After loading a private key, ssh-add will try to load correspond-
     ing certificate information from the filename obtained by appending -cert.pub to the name of the private key file.  Alter-
     native 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.  Confirma-
             tion 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 pkcs11
             Remove keys provided by the PKCS#11 shared library pkcs11.

     -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 pkcs11
             Add keys provided by the PKCS#11 shared library pkcs11.

     -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 acces-
     sible 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.

BSD                                                      April 12, 2014                                                      BSD