It's possible to make XTERM and Gnome-keyring work together?

Question

When I'am connecting to ssh with gnome-terminal application opens gnome-keyring dialog, so I am entering password only once per session and I can reconnect to same ssh more than once without asking the password.

But this doesn't work in xterm. Maybe someone can help to make this work?

Answer 1

Are you running xterm from inside your Gnome session as well?

Try this in Gnome Terminal:

echo $SSH_AUTH_SOCK

Then try the same in xterm.

It should print something like

/tmp/keyring-abc123/ssh

in both.

I'm guessing it doesn't print something like that in xterm.

If it's empty, something is clearing it (or not setting it).

If looks more like

/tmp/ssh-defgh67890/agent

then you are also running ssh-agent somewhere, which will get confusing.

Here's what I'd try:

Run echo $0 in both. Does one have - at the start and the other not?

If so, you are probably running ssh-agent in login shells, but not non-login shells. Have a look in your ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile or equivalent scripts and fix the problem.

Or change whether xterm is started as a login shell:

1. using xterm*loginShell: true or xterm*loginShell: false in your ~/.Xdefaults or ~/.xresources?
2. by running xterm -ls or xterm (without -ls)

Copy the setting you have for Gnome Terminal under Profile Preferences->Title and Command->Run command as a login shell.

If that fails, try adding echo statements in your startup files. You'll need to redirect the output to a log file using echo $SSH_AUTH_SOCK >> ~/ssh-debug.log or similar.

Then log out and back in, and have a look at your ~/ssh-debug.log.

Then run Gnome Terminal and look at it again.

Then run xterm and look and look at it again.

Look for differences.

Have a look at /etc/pam.d/gdm and System->Preferences->Startup Applications. Do you have any other ssh-agent configuration anywhere in /etc/pam.d?

Have a look /etc/X11/Xsession and the scripts that it calls.

Answer 2

You can also have a look at the workaround given at Red Hat Bugzilla - Bug 713955 - SSH_AUTH_SOCK environment variable not present in terminals launched via keyboard shortcut by adding this to your ~/.bashrc:

#GPG and SSH agent not exported when running terminal by shortcut
if [ -z "$GPG_AGENT_INFO" -a -z "$SSH_AUTH_SOCK" -a -n "$GNOME_KEYRING_CONTROL" ] ; then
        #derive GPG and SSH agent info from GNOME_KEYRING_CONTROL
        export GPG_AGENT_INFO="$GNOME_KEYRING_CONTROL/gpg:0:1"
        export SSH_AUTH_SOCK="$GNOME_KEYRING_CONTROL/ssh"
fi

In my case (Centos 6 with gnome 2.28), the GNOME_KEYRING_CONTROL variable does not exist (but GNOME_KEYRING_SOCKET does), and the gnome keyring "seahorse" does not seem to provide GPG_AGENT_INFO.

So I ended up with this version (also placed in ~/.bashrc):

set_keyring_agent() {
# SSH agent not exported when running terminal by shortcut
# see https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=713955#c4
# and http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/11355/its-possible-to-make-xterm-and-gnome-keyring-work-together
if [[ -n "${GNOME_KEYRING_SOCKET}" && -z "${SSH_AUTH_SOCK}" ]] ; then
  #derive SSH agent info from GNOME_KEYRING_SOCKET
  local ssh_auth_socket="${GNOME_KEYRING_SOCKET}.ssh"
  if [[ -S "${ssh_auth_socket}" ]] ; then
    export SSH_AUTH_SOCK="${ssh_auth_socket}"
  fi
fi
}

set_keyring_agent

Answer 3

While I didn't figure out what magic makes gnome-terminal get the correct SSH_AUTH_SOCK from gnome-keyring-daemon, I found a workaround to set the correct value in XTerm (or other terminals). Add the following to your .bashrc:

SSH_AUTH_SOCK=`netstat -xl | grep -o '/tmp/keyring-.*/ssh$'`
[ -z "$SSH_AUTH_SOCK" ] || export SSH_AUTH_SOCK

What this does: it looks for a local listening socket which has a name matching the pattern "/tmp/keyring-*/ssh", and sets the value of SSH_AUTH_SOCK to that, if it's present.

Source: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=10786874#post10786874