this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2024
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why can't I connect to my ssh server UNLESS I enter eval "$(ssh-agent -s)" first? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by dysprosium@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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I have my own ssh server (on raspberry pi 5, Ubuntu Server 23) but when I try to connect from my PC using key authentication (having password disabled), I get a blank screen. A blinking cursor.

However, once I enter the command eval "$(ssh-agent -s)" and try ssh again, I successfully login after entering my passphrase. I don't want to issue this command every time. Is that possible?

This does not occur when I have password enabled on the ssh server. Also, ideally, I want to enter my passphrase EVERYTIME I connect to my server, so ideally I don't want it to be stored in cache or something. I want the passphrase to be a lil' password so that other people can't accidentally connect to my server when they use my PC.

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[–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I have no idea why but ssh seems to not use keys with different names by default

[–] dysprosium@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

can you expand on that? What do you mean different names? My PC has of course a different username than the server I'm connecting to. The label name at the end of the key is just a comment, so this is also not what you're referring to, I think.

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[–] kolorafa@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

The only reason ssh client would "hang" without any output is when it's waiting for external key storage to allow access. It's designed that way to give user some time to approve access to key storage.

It sometimes happen that the installed key storage is broken in a way that it fails to show user modal, for any reason (showing on wrong screen, wrong desktop, wrong activity, wrong framebuffer, ....)

One solution (that you already did) is to change the SSH agent env variable to point to different key storage.

Another would be (if possible) to uninstall the broken key storage if you don't use it. But it is sometimes needed/used by other apps.

It's overall good to notify/open bug on your distro issue tracker to notify that some packages are missconfigured (maybe have missing dependencies) or conflicts with other ones.

[–] dysprosium@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I am not sure I "solved" this but when I add this to my startup script for my terminal (~/.zshrc):

SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/ssh-agent-$USER-socket
export SSH_AUTH_SOCK

it works then. I am not sure I'm still using the ssh agent, but at least it also does not cache my passphrase (or private key in ram)

[–] mvirts@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago

Your shell for user pi may be broken. Try adding the shell command to your ssh command explicitly like

ssh pi@host /bin/sh

Or use /bin/bash

[–] furry@furry.engineer 0 points 10 months ago (3 children)

@dysprosium ssh agent manages your ssh keys and automatically passes them as an identity when connecting to a server

If you want to connect without it, you can simply pass -i \<path to private key\> flag

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