[winswitch] WinSwitch - Issues connecting via SSH?

Antoine Martin antoine at nagafix.co.uk
Wed Feb 22 10:02:20 GMT 2012


>> Firstly - is it possible to use a SSH private key that has a password? I
>> can't seem to find any option to enter in a password for the key. The
>> workaround is just to use a keyfile without a password, or to use
>> username/password based authentication, but neither are as secure, of
>> course.
> Yes.
> It will use an ssh agent if one is running.
> If it isn't running or if it does not have the passphrase for that key,
> Winswitch will popup a dialog asking for the passphrase (the same dialog
> which may ask you for a password if you have no key defined)
Until pagent is supported, this is your only option.

> From you log file, I see:
> ConchUserAuth.serviceStarted() agent_socket_filename=None
> Which tells me that Winswitch cannot find the ssh-agent's socket.
> This is what my environment looks like, yours should be similar for it
> to work:
> $ export | grep -i ssh_
> declare -x SSH_AGENT_PID="1998"
> declare -x SSH_ASKPASS="/usr/libexec/openssh/gnome-ssh-askpass"
> declare -x SSH_AUTH_SOCK="/tmp/ssh-urTdcIsR1903/agent.1903"
Which is irrelevant on MS Windows...

> If this does not help, please let me know your full distribution version
> and environment so I can try to reproduce the problem.
It just occurred to me that you are using the Windows client, which does
not support putty's "pageant" authentication agent as it is...

I can't seem to find information on what environment variables pageant
sets and how we're supposed to talk to it. (no unix domain sockets on MS
Windows.. and I don't think twisted-conch supports NamedPipes)

So I've created a ticket for this feature:
https://winswitch.org/trac/ticket/190

Cheers
Antoine



More information about the shifter-users mailing list