putty pageant - forget keys after period of inactivity

Posted by pQd on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by pQd
Published on 2013-06-25T10:02:04Z Indexed on 2013/06/25 10:22 UTC
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putty

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ssh-agent

in the environment where windows client computers are used to run putty to connect to multiple linux servers i'm considering moving away from password based authentication and using public/private key pairs with pass-phrases.

using ssh-agent would be nice, but at the same time i'd like it to 'forget' the pass-phrases after given period of inactivity.

it seems that putty's pageant does not provide such feature; what would you suggest as alternative? solutions that i'm considering:

patching pageant code [might be tricky, code is probably quite rusty and project - sadly - stagnant]
writing small custom application using GetLastInputInfo and killing pageant if the machine was idle for more than let's say 15 minutes [ yes, there'll be separate policy for locking the desktops as well ]
using alternative ssh client and ssh agent. any suggestions?

thanks!

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