Updating the system has broken ssh-agent

Question

Hi everyone, I recently encountered a strange problem with ssh-agent. For a very long I started it with a simple
ssh-agent
and everything was fine - I could add a key from a different console and everything was immediately visible in all the applications that needed SSH key authentication. However, after the last updates I noticed that simple ssh-agent no longer works - the environment variables are not exported to the system. I know I can use eval `ssh-agent`, but:
- Once I close the console, I cannot use the ssh-agent process anymore.
- The agent is not visible from a different console.
- The agent is not visible from NetBeans or something similar.
I noticed the problem for the first time in December, after switching to Arch x86_64, but I managed to get the old call working somehow. Unfortunately, I have no idea, how I did that . Now I've updated Arch x86 both on laptop and on a desktop and the problem appeared again on both of them. I found several resources about ssh-agent via Google, but nothing concerns my problem directly. Has anyone encountered a similar problem, too and knows, what is wrong with the new Arch SSH packages or how to fix it? I would appreciate any help, because SSH is critical for me and now it doesn't work correctly on any of my computers.

Answer 1

I'm not sure how to directly answer your question, but here's the portion of my .bashrc I use to start the ssh agent on login. Hope it helps! I'm also running x86_64.
SSH_ENV="$HOME/.ssh/environment"
function start_agent {
echo "Initialising new SSH agent..."
/usr/bin/ssh-agent | sed 's/^echo/#echo/' > "${SSH_ENV}"
echo succeeded
chmod 600 "${SSH_ENV}"
. "${SSH_ENV}" > /dev/null
/usr/bin/ssh-add;
# Source SSH settings, if applicable
if [ -f "${SSH_ENV}" ]; then
. "${SSH_ENV}" > /dev/null
ps -ef | grep ${SSH_AGENT_PID} | grep ssh-agent$ > /dev/null || {
start_agent;
else
start_agent;
fi
Good luck!
Scott