SSH key passphrase is no longer prompted for by GUI window the first time it's needed

[colin-conway]

Hi,

I'm using Xubuntu 18.04 Desktop.

Until recently the first time I did anything that required using my id_rsa key, a window would open prompting for the "passphrase" to unlock the key.

Now, when I ssh it prompts in the terminal for the passphrase every time, and if I try to using Remmina to make a VNC connection that tunnels through SSH, it fails with an error.


NOTE: I vaguely recall unchecking some checkboxes in the Session and Startup, Application Autostart tab a while ago (maybe around the time this started), but I have tried enabling what I think would be the ones that might affect this with no luck. That may be completely unrelated, but thought I should mention it.


So far I've worked out:

If I run ssh-add in the terminal and enter the passphrase then all the SSH connections work perfectly, ...until I reboot.

If I run env | grep SSH I get this:

SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/home/colin/.byobu/.ssh-agent
SSH_AGENT_PID=2420

The file /home/colin/.byobu/.ssh-agent is a symlink to: /tmp/ssh-hC8goIZugo6A/agent.2319

According to ps -ejH 2319 is the process id of a lightdm shell, and 2420 is the process id of the ssh-agent:

...
2201  1704  1704 ?        00:00:00     lightdm
2319  2319  2319 ?        00:00:00       sh
2420  2420  2420 ?        00:00:00         ssh-agent
...

...which all looks great, but now I'm stumped and no amount of searching has turned up any useful clues.


Any help would be greatly appreciated. =)

[TheFu]

Just a guess.

ssh-askpass on the system? There are different versions for each GUI, if you prefer to have a pop-up.
I don't have 18.04, so can't check my guess.

[colin-conway]

Thanks TheFu!!

ssh-agent was installed, but your suggestion gave me a new direction in which to investigate and I stumbled upon this post:

https://ask.fedoraproject.org/en/que...post-id-116783

...in which I found that Launch GNOME Services On Startup wasn't checked (I think I unchecked this while "fixing" my laptop not sleeping issue.)