Im trying to set up SSH forwarding like this osx debianA debianB I can connect to debianA fine, using ssh -A and it has the following env vars when i do: SSH_AGENT_PID=1543 SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/ssh-giwdYY1542/agent.1542 SSH_CLIENT='92.233.199.x 38954 22' SSH_CONNECTION='92.233.199.x 38954 108.171.179.x 22' SSH_TTY=/dev/pts/0 When i try to connect to debianB, the agent is not used! ssh -v output ends with: debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_REQUEST sent debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_ACCEPT received debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,password debug1: Next authentication method: publickey debug1: Trying private key: /home/nic/.ssh/id_rsa debug1: Trying private key: /home/nic/.ssh/id_dsa debug1: Next authentication method: password Then im asked for a password. I have not set any ForwardAgent no directives in ssh_config and dont have a .ssh/config at all. sshd_config has not got AllowAgentForwarding in it. I have tried all of these directives as yes also. debianA and debianB both have identical ssh_config and sshd_config (verified with diff) so the really weird thing is connecting OSX debianB debianA works fine!! Im totally out of ideas! Has anyone come across this before? Cheers! NFV