Ssh – Running ssh-agent from a shell script

bashshellshell-scriptingsshssh-agent

I'm trying to create a shell script that, among other things, starts up ssh-agent and adds a private key to the agent. Example:

#!/bin/bash
# ...
ssh-agent $SHELL
ssh-add /path/to/key
# ...

The problem with this is ssh-agent apparently kicks off another instance of $SHELL (in my case, bash) and from the script's perspective it's executed everything and ssh-add and anything below it is never run.

How can I run ssh-agent from my shell script and keep it moving on down the list of commands?

Best Answer

ssh-agent is supposed to start a session and when it finishes the user session is over. So any command after ssh-agent would perhaps be executed after logoff.

What you want is a session-script that contains your sessions commands like this:

#!/bin/bash
ssh-add /path/to/key
bash -i # or other session starter

Then start ssh-agent session-script.

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