keychain - Man Page
Agent manager for OpenSSH, ssh.com, Sun SSH, and GnuPG
Examples (TL;DR)
- Check for a running ssh-agent, and start one if needed:
keychain - Also check for gpg-agent:
keychain --agents "gpg,ssh" - List signatures of all active keys:
keychain --list - List fingerprints of all active keys:
keychain --list-fp - Add a timeout for identities added to the agent, in minutes:
keychain --timeout minutes
Description
Actions
- add
Add keys to the agent (auto-start one if needed).
- agent
Agent lifecycle (start | stop).
- list
List keys currently held by ssh-agent.
- wipe
Clear SSH identities by default, or explicitly clear the gpg-agent cache.
- forget
Evict specific SSH keys from ssh-agent.
- env
Print agent env in the requested format.
- inspect
Structured snapshot of every state probe.
- help
Print the cheat-sheet (same as --help).
- man
Full documentation.
- version
Print version banner.
Global options
- --help, -h
print help
- --version, -V
print version
- --explain
explain this invocation instead of running it
- --allow-env, -E
allow KEYCHAIN_* environment variables
- --quiet, -q
suppress non-error output on stderr
- --debug, -D
trace agent-selection decisions on stderr
- --nocolor, --no-color
disable ANSI color output
- --theme
color theme: legacy or modern
- --no-gui, --nogui
don't use GUI passphrase prompts
- --absolute
treat --dir as the literal pidfile dir
- --dir
pidfile directory (default: ~/.keychain)
- --host
override hostname used for pidfile naming
See keychain man for full documentation, or
keychain man --list to list all available manual pages.