I just upgraded my Ubuntu 16.10 install to Ubuntu 17.04 and have found that I no longer have a working ssh-agent:

$ ssh-add my_rsa_key
Error connecting to agent: No such file or directory
$

Upon minimal investigation, I see that SSH_AUTH_SOCK is set to something that doesn't appear to make sense:

$ env | grep SSH
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/run/user/1000/openssh_agent
SSH_AGENT_LAUNCHER=openssh
$

I don't know what is responsible for /run/user/1000/openssh_agent but it's not working on my system:

$ ls /run/user/1000/openssh_agent
ls: cannot access '/run/user/1000/openssh_agent': No such file or directory

I had a working ssh-agent on Ubuntu 16.10 after I added eval $(ssh-agent) as a "startup application". This is still present and there is an ssh-agent running but I don't appear to have the correct agent env vars set anymore.

0

1 Answer

This might help:

1. Ensure that a reasonably up-to-date version of the OpenSSH SSH Agent is installed.

2. Add this to ~/.bashrc:

   if ! pgrep -u "$USER" ssh-agent > /dev/null; then ssh-agent > ~/.ssh-agent-thing
   fi
   eval "$(cat ~/.ssh-agent-thing)" >& /dev/null

3. Using GNOME Tweak Tool, go to "Startup Applications" and remove "Passwords and Keys".

4. Add this to ~/.pam_environment:

   GSM_SKIP_SSH_AGENT_WORKAROUND DEFAULT=1

5. Log out of the GNOME Desktop Environment (or, if needed, reboot).

After performing this workaround, running ssh-agent or ssh-add from GNOME Terminal should result in OpenSSH's SSH agent being invoked.

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