How to disable ssh-agent in Snow Leopard?

Question

Level 1

0 points

How to disable ssh-agent in Snow Leopard?

Bad surprise in Snow Leopard is for me ssh-agent. ssh-agent is automatically launched every time you use ssh to connect somewhere. And it is launched with no timeout I mean. I don't like this.

How to disable ssh-agent? Or how to configure ssh-agent to shorten its timeout?

MacBook white 2,16 Ghz, Mac OS X (10.6)

Posted on Aug 30, 2009 11:59 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

Nils C. Anderson

Level 4

3,495 points

Aug 30, 2009 1:21 PM in response to snilard

it looks like it is started by Launchd, from the following file.

/System/Library/LaunchAgentsorg.openbsd.ssh-agent.plist

but that is under 10.5.8. It may very well be started from the same
file under 10.6.

Reply

Answer 2

Aug 30, 2009 1:33 PM in response to Nils C. Anderson

it appears that you could disable it by adding following 2 lines after the <dict> entry.
A correct to the file name that I listed above.

/System/Library/LaunchAgents/org.openbsd.ssh-agent.plist


<dict>
 <key>Disabled</key>
 <false/>

Reply

Answer 3

snilard Author

Level 1

0 points

Aug 30, 2009 2:17 PM in response to Nils C. Anderson

Your solution doesn't work. But I have mine.
I cannot disable ssh-agent. But I know how to set timeout to ssh-agent. I added one argument to ProgramArguments.


<key>ProgramArguments</key>
 <array>
 <string>/usr/bin/ssh-agent</string>
 <string>-l</string>
 <string>-t 60</string>
 </array>

Timeout is now one minute. Then it needs restart.

Reply

Answer 4

Camelot

Level 9

54,333 points

Aug 30, 2009 2:30 PM in response to snilard

Did that work?

It might, but technically it's not the correct format for specifying such a parameter.

ProgramArguments need to be specified individually, including the values for switches.

Therefore, instead of:

<string>-t 60</string>

you should put:

<string>-t</string>
<string>60</string>

Reply

Answer 5

snilard Author

Level 1

0 points

Aug 30, 2009 2:33 PM in response to Camelot

Yes. It works.

I will change to correct format.

Thanks to you all.

Reply

Answer 6

kuoirad

Level 1

0 points

Sep 11, 2009 9:44 AM in response to snilard

A better solution would probably be to remove ssh-agent from launchctl.

Found a "correct" way to do this from reddit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/9fnnc/askrapple_how_do_i_disablesshagent/

Reply