17

How come this happens?:

stan@tcpc:~/.ssh$ ssh-add -l
8192 e0:45:5e:cc:45:3e:17:2b:a6:54:6f:8d:53:1b:j2:e3 github (RSA)
2048 25:41:53:a6:45:5d:ac:eb:5c:45:f8:ce:42:a9:he:aa BITBUCKET (RSA)
stan@tcpc:~/.ssh$ ssh-add -D
All identities removed.
stan@tcpc:~/.ssh$ ssh-add -l
8192 e0:45:5e:cc:45:3e:17:2b:a6:54:6f:8d:53:1b:j2:e3 github (RSA)
2048 25:41:53:a6:45:5d:ac:eb:5c:45:f8:ce:42:a9:he:aa BITBUCKET (RSA)

How come keys aren't being erased?

p.s. could be this bug? http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=472477 I'm on arch linux though...

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3
  • That bug is years old; on an up-to-date Arch box, it works as expected: openssh 6.2p1-1
    – jasonwryan
    Commented Apr 16, 2013 at 18:16
  • jsonwryan... it's actual not years old. Last comment dated 05 Oct 2012 - mentions that it still wasn't fixed. Other comments suggest that the problem is upstream. And no - it doesn't work for me on up-to-date Arch system. However - when I move ssh keys from ~/.ssh directory into ~/.ssh/my_keys (as suggested in bug report) -> addition and removal does work as expected.
    – agent_smith
    Commented Apr 16, 2013 at 18:25
  • 3
    Read the report carefully: "Fixed in version 3.2.2-2" - pacman -Ss gnome-keyring: 3.6.3-1
    – jasonwryan
    Commented Apr 16, 2013 at 18:32

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
3

The steps in this post worked for me; you just need to open the Startup Applications manager, uncheck the entry for "SSH Key Agent - GNOME Keyring: SSH Agent", and restart Unity. If it doesn't show up, edit /etc/xdg/autostart/gnome-keyring-ssh.desktop and change NoDisplay=true to NoDisplay=false.

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2
  • 2
    the link to "this post" is dead
    – Carson Ip
    Commented Aug 23, 2018 at 4:12
  • Why would showing the gnome keyring tool make a difference in removing the keys?
    – Alexis Wilke
    Commented Oct 29, 2021 at 16:53
3

Go to /tmp folder, delete all folder starts with ssh

solomon@debian:/tmp$ rm -rf ssh

solomon@debian:/tmp$ ssh-add -D

All identities removed.

solomon@debian:/tmp$ ssh-add -l
The agent has no identities.
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1
  • Don't know why this was down voted. It put me in the right track, although I wouldn't remove ssh folder (!!!!). By just changing folder name and then back to .ssh, gnome keyring stopped listing ssh key. That allowed me to do ssh-add and it all was working as it should
    – cortopy
    Commented May 15, 2016 at 16:36
1

I had the same problem as you did. I'm not an expert, but the solution that worked for me was to remove the keys from the ~/.ssh directory. This is an example of what I was seeing.

$ ssh-add -l
2048 06:e9:a6:14:2a:e4:c3:11:56:ea:c3:5d:f9:84:79:c6 first key (RSA)
2048 2c:c3:97:fe:f3:cf:03:dc:d3:0b:87:2b:01:72:33:3b second key (RSA)
$ ssh-add -d ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
Identity removed: /home/user/.ssh/ybot_rsa.pub (/home/user/.ssh/id_rsa.pub)
$ ssh-add -l
2048 06:e9:a6:14:2a:e4:c3:11:56:ea:c3:5d:f9:84:79:c6 first key (RSA)
2048 2c:c3:97:fe:f3:cf:03:dc:d3:0b:87:2b:01:72:33:3b second key (RSA)

It was after moving id_rsa (and id_rsa.pub) from the ~/.ssh folder that the ssh-agent stopped having the identity. What I did was:

$ ssh-add -l
2048 06:e9:a6:14:2a:e4:c3:11:56:ea:c3:5d:f9:84:79:c6 first key (RSA)
2048 2c:c3:97:fe:f3:cf:03:dc:d3:0b:87:2b:01:72:33:3b second key (RSA)
$ mv ~/.ssh/id_rsa ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub ~/
$ ssh-add -l
2048 2c:c3:97:fe:f3:cf:03:dc:d3:0b:87:2b:01:72:33:3b second key (RSA)

I'm guessing (I could be wrong) that if you didn't have the Gnome Keyring daemon running (gnome-keyring-daemon), this behaviour would change. Maybe the original (and logical) solution would work, but not the second one.

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