Seahorse SSH Agent Proxy

Note: This only applies to versions of Seahorse prior to 2.22. In 2.22 and later a full SSH agent is included in gnome-keyring and the agent proxy in Seahorse has been retired.

The Seahorse SSH agent helps load SSH keys and keep them in memory. It is not a full SSH agent as such, but works in conjuction with the SSH agent from openssh.

The Seahorse SSH agent tries to cache your appropriate SSH keys the first time they are accessed. This is similar to you manually using the 'ssh-add' command. It prompts with a GUI password prompt, and lets you save the passwords in gnome-keyring.

1. Prerequisites

1. You must be running Seahorse CVS or (once it's released) Seahorse version 0.9.2+.
2. Your SSH agent must be setup and ready for use. You can verify this with ssh-add. Most modern distributions have this setup already.
3. You must have at least one SSH key and it should be ready to use. You can use Seahorse to generate your SSH key and send it to the computers you wish to access.

2. How to Use

1. Select 'Automatically load SSH keys' in 'Encryption Preferences' (ie: seahorse-preferences)
2. Make sure seahorse-daemon is running.
3. Use SSH to connect to a remote computer.
4. You should be prompted for the password to your key.

3. Notes

If any keys are already loaded (ie: you manually loaded them with 'ssh-add') then the Seahorse SSH agent won't try to do any key loading.