How can I have the passphrase for a private key remembered for a user?

Posted by Jon Cram on Ask Ubuntu See other posts from Ask Ubuntu or by Jon Cram
Published on 2012-09-04T08:22:52Z Indexed on 2012/09/04 9:49 UTC
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keychain

I have a collection of web services running on Ubuntu Server 12.04 that pull code from a github repository.

These services run under a specific user (let's call that user 'example'). In /home/example/.ssh/is_rsa is the private key associated with the relevant github account.

When performing an operation such as git pull I am greeted with: Enter passphrase for key '/home/simplytestable/.ssh/id_rsa':. Enter the correct password and all is ok.

The same private key is present on local development Ubuntu Desktop 12.04 machines and no passphrase is asked for.

I'd like to be able to have the passphrase remembered so that upon entering it once it is never asked for again. This will aid in automating various web service updates.

I'm guessing that the passphrase needs to be stored in the relevant user's keychain such that I don't have to enter it every time the private key needs to be unlocked.

How can I achieve this?

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