Illecors, 1 year ago

Yes, it can be done. Not to the point of deleting your key (that makes no sense - you need the key), but ssh-agent is what you want. Add it to your shell config and it will only ask to be unlocked once per however often you define.

I have this function defined and called:

<span style="color:#323232;">function ssh-agent-setup() {
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    # SSH agent
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    pid_file="$HOME/.ssh/ssh-agent.pid"
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    SSH_AUTH_SOCK="$HOME/.ssh/ssh-agent.sock"
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    if [ -z "$SSH_AGENT_PID" ]
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    then
</span><span style="color:#323232;">      # no PID exported, try to get it from pidfile
</span><span style="color:#323232;">      SSH_AGENT_PID=$(cat "$pid_file")
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    fi
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    if ! kill -0 "$SSH_AGENT_PID" &> /dev/null
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    then
</span><span style="color:#323232;">      # the agent is not running, start it
</span><span style="color:#323232;">      rm "$SSH_AUTH_SOCK" &> /dev/null
</span><span style="color:#323232;">      >&2 echo "Starting SSH agent, since it's not running; this can take a moment"
</span><span style="color:#323232;">      eval "$(ssh-agent -s -a "$SSH_AUTH_SOCK")"
</span><span style="color:#323232;">      echo "$SSH_AGENT_PID" > "$pid_file"
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">      >&2 echo "Started ssh-agent with '$SSH_AUTH_SOCK'"
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    fi
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    export SSH_AGENT_PID
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    export SSH_AUTH_SOCK
</span><span style="color:#323232;">}
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">ssh-agent-setup
</span>

This way it stores the unlocked key in memory until the end of the session.