Ssh – Delete key not working when PuTTYed in to AIX box using Korn shell

I have my passpharseless ssh login setup. I use a command like the following: rsync --delete -auve 'ssh -i /home/red/.ssh/cron_jobs_key' red@othermachine:/source/dir1 /dest/dir2

The key here is "-i /home/red/.ssh/cron_jobs_key" where I have setup an ssh login without a password. Otherwise, I would have to enter my ssh key when I login to my local machine. I generated this ssh key specifically for cron jobs.

Check to make sure that the login shell you're in doesn't have an alias or a different PATH depending on whether you're logged in via ssh or telnet. Compare this each way:

type -a bash

There could be some conditional code in one of:

• /etc/profile
• /.bash_profile
• ~/.bash_login
• ~/.profile
• ~/.bashrc

That sets the PATH differently or creates an alias depending on whether you're logged in via ssh or telnet. The PATH could point to different versions of Bash that are compiled with different options. An alias could be something like alias bash='bash -i'.

If you echo $SHELL as Nikolaidis suggests, that's only going to show what's set in /etc/passwd as your login shell. It might be more reliable to use ps. If for some reason you're getting a shell other than Bash, you'll need to check its startup files and environment to see if the PATH or aliases are different. Generally, though, your interactive shell shouldn't affect how explicitly calling bash -c works.

And you're correct about this:

As near as I can tell this is the correct behaviour given that the shell is non-interactive in both cases (it is invoked with -c).