Straightened out some flaws in the behaviour.

The idea is to have a single ssh-agent instance that holds all the keys.
Checking and spawning of ssh-agents should be consistent now.

1 files changed, 13 insertions, 10 deletions

diff --git a/_posts/2009-09-03-working-with-key-passphrases.textile b/_posts/2009-09-03-working-with-key-passphrases.textile
index 11fd037..604221e 100644
--- a/_posts/2009-09-03-working-with-key-passphrases.textile
+++ b/_posts/2009-09-03-working-with-key-passphrases.textile
@@ -36,29 +36,32 @@ h2. Auto-launching ssh-agent on msysgit
 You can run @ssh-agent@ automatically when you open bash by adding the following to your @~/.profile@ or @~/.bashrc@ file:
 
 <pre>
-SSH_ENV="$HOME/.ssh/environment"
 # automatically start the ssh-agent
 function start_agent {
     echo "Initializing new SSH agent..."
-    ssh-agent | sed 's/^echo/#echo/' > "${SSH_ENV}"
+    # spawn ssh-agent
+    eval `ssh-agent` > /dev/null
     echo succeeded
-    chmod 600 "${SSH_ENV}"
-    . "${SSH_ENV}" > /dev/null
     ssh-add
 }   
 
-# check for running ssh-agent
-ps -ef | grep ${SSH_AGENT_PID} | grep -v grep > /dev/null
+# check for running ssh-agent with proper $SSH_AGENT_PID
+ps -ef | grep $SSH_AGENT_PID | grep -v grep > /dev/null
 if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
-    # test whether standard identities have been added to
-    # the agent already
-    ssh-add -l | grep "agent has no identities"
+# test whether standard identities have been added to the agent already
+    ssh-add -l | grep "The agent has no identities" > /dev/null
     if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
         ssh-add
+        # $SSH_AUTH_SOCK broken so we start a new proper agent
+        if [ $? -ne 0 ];then
+            start_agent
+        fi
     fi 
+# if $SSH_AGENT_PID is not properly set, the socket is probably neither better
+# to start a new agent
 else
     start_agent
-fi  
+fi
 </pre>
 
 p(. *Note:* If you don't use the default key names, or store your keys in a different path, you will need to add the path to the @/usr/bin/ssh-add@ line so that ssh knows where to find your key.