Which of the following commands preloads and manages keys that are used for automatic authentication while logging in to other machines using SSH?

Question

Options

• Asshd
• Bssh-agent
• Cssh-keygen
• Dssh-add

• A
  6% (2)
• B
  77% (27)
• C
  11% (4)
• D
  6% (2)

Explanation

ssh-agent is correct because it runs as a background process that holds decrypted private keys in memory, enabling automatic authentication to remote machines without re-entering passphrases for each connection during a session.

Why the distractors are wrong:

• A. sshd - This is the SSH daemon (server-side process) that listens for incoming SSH connections; it has nothing to do with managing client-side keys.
• C. ssh-keygen - This generates SSH key pairs; it creates the keys but does not store or manage them for authentication sessions.
• D. ssh-add - This adds private keys to a running ssh-agent; it's the loader, not the manager. The agent must already be running before ssh-add can do anything.

Memory tip: Think of ssh-agent as the vault and ssh-add as the action of depositing keys into the vault. The vault (agent) is what actually handles authentication - you add keys to it, and it does the work automatically from then on.

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