On my Windows development machine, I use Pageant with a secret key to authenticate with an SVN server.
I want to know: what's the equivalent Mac process for doing this? Pageant isn't ported, how do I authenticate?
14 Answers
I use SSH Keychain on my Mac to manage my ssh key agent and attached keys. It runs ssh-agent, and ssh-add to manage the keys behind the scenes, but starts up when I login, stores the passphrase in OSX login keychain (you don't have to do this, though).
3ssh-add and ssh-agent are the equivalent tools, which are built in. Best way is to read any tutorial for linux or os x in setting up auth with ssh, it will be the same.
Pageant is a Windows workaround for not having OpenSSH installed. Since modern macs are UNIX, you don't have to install anything!
Here's a quick rundown on how to set it up
2For me ~/.ssh/config file works best. Add to it groups of configs using this scheme:
host shortname
user my_username
hostname host.of.the.server.example.com
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/key.opensshand then
ssh shortnamewill connect using that settings, including the key. This lets you have lots of different keys for different hosts without having to add them all to ssh-agent.