{"id":3550,"date":"2014-03-26T07:00:14","date_gmt":"2014-03-26T06:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.b.shuttle.de\/hayek\/Hayek\/Jochen\/wp\/blog-en\/?p=3550"},"modified":"2025-02-20T16:49:33","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T15:49:33","slug":"startup-putty-authentication-agent-with-private-keys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/2014\/03\/26\/startup-putty-authentication-agent-with-private-keys\/","title":{"rendered":"startup PuTTY&#8217;s authentication agent &#8220;Pageant&#8221; with private keys"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pageant.exe\">https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pageant.exe<\/a>&nbsp;\u2013&nbsp;<em>an SSH authentication agent for PuTTY, PSCP and Plink<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/ssh-agent\">https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/ssh-agent<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">PuTTY&#8217;s authentication agent pageant combines the functionality of <em>ssh-agent<\/em> and <em>ssh-add<\/em>, and if you start it up, it makes sense to add the necessary private keys on its command line. You can do this using a script, but in Windows it&#8217;s convenient to does this through a &#8220;.lnk&#8221; shortcut. And if you place that &#8220;.lnk&#8221; file in Windows&#8217; user startup directory, you won&#8217;t forget to start it manually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here is a nice description of how to make &#8220;<em>\u2026 Pageant automatically load keys on startup<\/em>&#8220;:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.shvetsov.com\/2010\/03\/making-pageant-automatically-load-keys.html\">http:\/\/blog.shvetsov.com\/2010\/03\/making-pageant-automatically-load-keys.html<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Basically:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>let all your private keys live in one directory!<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>make this directory the one to &#8220;<em>Start in:<\/em>&#8221; (that&#8217;s a property of the &#8220;.lnk&#8221; file)!<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>and name the private keys (where you pass them to Pageant) w\/o the directory.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/support.microsoft.com\/en-us\/windows\/add-an-app-to-run-automatically-at-startup-in-windows-10-150da165-dcd9-7230-517b-cf3c295d89dd\">https:\/\/support.microsoft.com\/en-us\/windows\/add-an-app-to-run-automatically-at-startup-in-windows-10-150da165-dcd9-7230-517b-cf3c295d89dd<\/a> \u2013 Win 10<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Recipe (Win &lt;10):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>within&nbsp;your Windows auto-start-up folder (<em>Start &gt; All Programs &gt; Startup &#8212; right-click &gt; Open<\/em>) &#8230;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>create a Windows &#8220;shortcut&#8221; to Pageant.exe, it gets called pageant.exe.lnk!<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>edit the shortcut&#8217;s properties!<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>tell the command line, where to &#8220;<em>Start in:<\/em>&#8220;!\u00a0<code>%USERPROFILE%\\AppData\\Roaming\\putty<\/code>\u00a0or <code>%USERPROFILE%\\etc\\putty<\/code> (that&#8217;s where you created resp. left your private keys using PuTTYgen)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">add<\/span> the private keys on the command line within &#8220;<em>Target:<\/em>&#8221; (<code>YOUR.ppk<\/code>)&#8211; and the paths may be relative to the directory you mentioned in &#8220;<em>Start in:<\/em>&#8220;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Recipe (\u2026):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>%USERPROFILE%\/AppData\/Roaming\/Microsoft\/Windows\/Start Menu\/Programs\/Startup\/ : Pageant.lnk<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u2026<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s helpful to dump the details of pageant.exe.lnk using one of these nice tools:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/Jochen.Hayek.name\/wp\/blog-en\/2017\/12\/06\/cygwin-cygutils-readshortcut\/\">http:\/\/Jochen.Hayek.name\/wp\/blog-en\/2017\/12\/06\/cygwin-cygutils-readshortcut\/<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/Jochen.Hayek.name\/wp\/blog-en\/2017\/12\/06\/pylnker\/\">http:\/\/Jochen.Hayek.name\/wp\/blog-en\/2017\/12\/06\/pylnker\/<\/a>&nbsp;\u2013 refers you to a Python and a Perl tool<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">PuTTY&#8217;s&nbsp;authentication agent &#8220;Pageant&#8221; has its counterparts in: ssinf h-agent + ssh-add<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.safaribooksonline.com\/library\/view\/linux-server-hacks\/0596004613\/ch06s05.html\">https:\/\/www.safaribooksonline.com\/library\/view\/linux-server-hacks\/0596004613\/ch06s05.html<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/Jochen.Hayek.name\/wp\/blog-en\/2013\/09\/03\/oreilly-media-book-linux-server-hacks-vol-1\/\">http:\/\/Jochen.Hayek.name\/wp\/blog-en\/2013\/09\/03\/oreilly-media-book-linux-server-hacks-vol-1\/<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PuTTY&#8217;s authentication agent pageant combines the functionality of ssh-agent and ssh-add, and if you start it up, it makes sense to add the necessary private keys on its command line. You can do this using a script, but in Windows it&#8217;s convenient to does this through a &#8220;.lnk&#8221; shortcut. And if you place that &#8220;.lnk&#8221; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"making PuTTY's authentication agent \"Pageant\" automatically load private keys on startup http:\/\/wp.me\/p4qjMw-Vg","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[347,475,564],"tags":[901,1240,1322],"class_list":["post-3550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-microsoft-windows","category-putty","category-ssh","tag-authentication-agent","tag-private-keys","tag-ssh-agent"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paO0kP-Vg","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3550"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13410,"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3550\/revisions\/13410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}