View source for ssh-agent user setup and on demand ssh-add

DESCRIPTION (from man page)
     ssh-agent is a program to hold private keys used for public key authentication (RSA, DSA, ECDSA).  The idea is that
     ssh-agent is started in the beginning of an X-session or a login session, and all other windows or programs are
     started as clients to the ssh-agent program.  Through use of environment variables the agent can be located and
     automatically used for authentication when logging in to other machines using ssh(1).

to enable (assuming it is already installed) add the following lines to .bash_profile in the user home directory
 #ssh-agent start n stop for bourne shell
 SSHAGENT=/usr/bin/ssh-agent
 SSHAGENTARGS="-s"
 if [ -z "$SSH_AUTH_SOCK" -a -x "$SSHAGENT" ]; then
  eval `$SSHAGENT $SSHAGENTARGS`
  trap "kill $SSH_AGENT_PID" 0
 fi
 # alias that checks for existing ssh-add identities
 alias ssh="( ssh-add -l > /dev/null || ssh-add ) && ssh"

ssh-agent install check

check for binary, if you get a path back it is installed
 # which ssh-agent
 /usr/bin/ssh-agent

[[category:ssh]]