A recent thread on this list discussed setting up ssh so it didn't demand a password, and one or two people gave the standard advice of running ssh-agent behind a shell or X. However, older versions of Red Hat and Fedora Core ran X with ssh-agent automatically. In previous versions of Red Hat, I could simply follow the usual procedure of running ssh-agent, copying the key to the remote system, and running ssh-add in .bashrc. This no longer works in Fedora Core 3. (I haven't tried Fedora Core 4.) The /etc/X22/xinit/xinitrc-common file invokes SSH-AGENT, as in earlier distributions. A check on ps and a .pid file suggests that ssh-agent is indeed running. But ssh-add takes a long time before exiting, and Ethereal reports that no network activity is taking place. (I would expect some activity as ssh-add communicates with the remote system and verifies the key.) Thus, ssh always requests a password. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Andy Oram O'Reilly Media email: andyo@xxxxxxxxxxx Editor 90 Sherman Street voice: 617-499-7479 Cambridge, MA 02140-3233 fax: 617-661-1116 USA http://www.praxagora.com/andyo/ Stories at Web site: The Bug in the Seven Modules Code the Obscure The Disconnected ----------------------------------------------------------------------