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I'm having trouble with ssh-agent under cygwin. The crazy part is that it was working, but stopped after a reboot one day. Here is an example:

sthomas@sthomas-tcg ~ $ keychain ~/.ssh/id_rsa KeyChain 2.6.8; http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/keychain/ Copyright 2002-2004 Gentoo Foundation; Distributed under the GPL * Initializing /home/sthomas/.keychain/sthomas-tcg-sh file... * Initializing /home/sthomas/.keychain/sthomas-tcg-csh file... * Initializing /home/sthomas/.keychain/sthomas-tcg-fish file... * Starting ssh-agent * Adding 1 ssh key(s)... Enter passphrase for /home/sthomas/.ssh/id_rsa: Identity added: /home/sthomas/.ssh/id_rsa (/home/sthomas/.ssh/id_rsa) sthomas@sthomas-tcg ~ $ ssh-add Could not open a connection to your authentication agent. sthomas@sthomas-tcg ~ $ ssh stage Enter passphrase for key '/home/sthomas/.ssh/id_rsa':

I found this user who is having the exact same problem as me

Issues with ssh-add

Unfortunately I don't have enough rep to comment there. I tried following his instructions but the first step is not working for me:

sthomas@sthomas-tcg ~ $ `eval ssh-agent` -bash: SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/ssh-ejseksys5348/agent.5348;: No such file or directory

Anyone know what is going wrong here? The file does exist but the missing filename changes on each execution.

sthomas@sthomas-tcg ~ $ ls /tmp/ssh-ejseksys5348/agent.5348 /tmp/ssh-ejseksys5348/agent.5348
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  • Hmm. Can you do export SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/ssh-ejseksys5348/agent.5348 and then do the ssh-add? Commented Apr 25, 2012 at 16:24
  • @cjc wouldn't that only be a temporary fix? Commented Apr 25, 2012 at 16:29
  • Simple question, but is the ssh-agent process running? Commented Apr 25, 2012 at 17:01
  • @mgorven The OP's post suggests it's running, since he ran the command and there's a resulting socket file. The problem is to get ssh-agent's environmental variables exported so that ssh can see them. Commented Apr 25, 2012 at 17:11
  • @cjc Based on "the missing filename changes on each execution" I suspected that the process wasn't hanging around, but now I see that ssh-agent doesn't handle an existing running agent nicely and so this is expected. Commented Apr 25, 2012 at 17:17

2 Answers 2

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OK, that other Serverfault.com answer has a typo.

The right thing you want to run is:

eval `ssh-agent`

ssh-agent spits out a bunch of shell statements to set environmental variables. The eval runs them in the current shell. You can invoke ssh-agent that way, or run ssh-agent and then copy-paste its output into your current shell for the same effect.

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fixed another aspect of this message : I imported a key from a mint VM to cygwin. I used nano without nowrap and copied my public key over 3 lines instead of 1. I had to put in on an unique line and it finaly worked with eval.

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  • I'm confused. Are you commenting on an answer on a completely different question? Commented May 2, 2016 at 17:53

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