ssh-agent is starting?

Vgui · 10-19-2005, 12:23 PM

Hi all,
I switched from windowmaker to xfce4 recently, and now it looks like ssh-agent is running. I don't like processings running that I am not using, so I've looked to see where it is started from. I did a grep in /etc/rc.d/ and /etc/X11/, and nothing came up.
Any ideas? Is ssh-agent direly necessary for ssh/sshd to work?

Tinkster · 10-19-2005, 01:50 PM

Only required if you use password-less ssh with an
account that does use a pass-phrase.

As far as where it's started from, one way (by process
of elimination) to find out would be to find its parent for
starters, and then narrow it down. But it certainly wouldn't
be in the system-wide files since keys like those are
user-specific.

Cheers,
Tink

Vgui · 10-20-2005, 07:48 PM

Thanks Tinkster, I'll try to track down what is starting it up, then give ssh a try with and without the agent (I'm thinking without will be fine).

Vgui · 10-21-2005, 09:30 PM

Well, I got it figured out. It was indeed being started by X, in this case xfce4. Buried in their xinitrc file (in /usr/local/etc/xdg/xfce4/) ssh-agent was being started, I guess they thought that would be best for their users. Well, I removed that since I like to hand type my passwords over and over. I tracked this down by looking at startx, and noticed the xinitrc file being read in there.
Thanks for the help, hopefully this can point anyone else who is having problems in the right direction.