ssh-add complains: Could not open a connection to your authentication agent

Question

I've been trying to get ssh-add working on a RaspberryPi running Raspbian.

I can start ssh-agent, when I do it gives the following output into the terminal:

SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/ssh-06TcpPflMg58/agent.2806; export SSH_AUTH_SOCK;
SSH_AGENT_PID=2807; export SSH_AGENT_PID;
echo Agent pid 2807;

If I run ps aux | grep ssh I can see it is running.

Then I try to run ssh-add in order to add my key passphrase, and I get the following:

Could not open a connection to your authentication agent.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Your shell is meant to evaluate that shell code output by ssh-agent. Run this instead:

eval "$(ssh-agent)"

Or if you've started ssh-agent already, copy paste it to your shell prompt (assuming you're running a Bourne-like shell).

ssh commands need to know how to talk to the ssh-agent, they know that from the SSH_AUTH_SOCK environment variable.