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ssh-add: could not add identity xxx agent refused operation – Debian

I copied identities id_rsa from an old computer to a new one, both running the same version of Debian. When I do ssh-add I get:

Could not add identity xxx: agent refused operation

Why?

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3

Answers


  1. 0

    Your ssh-agent is not running or ssh-add can not connect to it via SSH_AUTH_SOCK.

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  2. 0

    To get ssh-agent running:

    eval `ssh-agent`
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  3. 0

    In my case the SSH_AUTH_SOCK socket was not pointing to the correct ssh-agent instance. So what I did was to

    1. kill all ssh-agents (I had 2, for some reason),
    2. run the agent in debug mode with ssh-agent -d so that it printed its socket,
    3. set SSH_AUTH_SOCK to that value and run ssh-add <key file>, which worked

    OriginallySSH_AUTH_SOCK was /private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.3sfgCOEaij/Listeners (I am on Mac) while when I start ssh-agent, it creates /var/folders/07/46ycckp94db7k29k012nxjp00000gn/T//ssh-bWhNQhrLKeVJ/agent.35804, i.e. a completely different path. I have no idea where the original one came from. (It is also possible that the GPG Suite and its gpg-agent are somehow messing things up.)

    Update

    I think I know what the problem was. The original SSH_AUTH_SOCK (…apple…/Listeners) is likely set by Apple’s ssh-agent, while I have been starting an openssh agent installed via brew (where ssh-agent -> /usr/local/bin/ssh-agent which is symlink to /usr/local/Cellar/openssh/9.1p1/bin/ssh-agent). That is also why I had to ssh-agent instances – the first was the OS-started apple one, the second was the openssh one I started in the terminal.

    And my ssh-add was failing b/c apple ssh-agent is old and does not support *-sk keys (sk = security key, with support for FIDO/U2F Support, see https://www.openssh.com/txt/release-8.2).

    Attempted permanent fix

    I have changed the ssh-agent started by OSX to be the brew-installed one – in /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.openssh.ssh-agent.plist I changed the path (the first of ProgramArguments) from ~/usr/bin/ssh-agent~ to

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