passphrase for ssh private key not being saved across reboot - support for key-agent

[dkebler]

Running Ubuntu 18.04 and BIT 1.1.24

I set up several remote jobs via ssh and they all work only the passphrase for my private ssh key is not preserved across a reboot. Every time I reboot BIT pops a dialog for each of these remote jobs asking for the ssh key passphrase again despite checking the "cache" and "keyring" options.

How can I get BIT to really store my ssh key passphrase.

Alternatively if BIT supported key-agent via a the so)cket it there would be no need to use the passphrase (at least from active desktop session)

[buhtz]

@dkebler There is a new forming maintaining team and we do review all issues. Is this problem still relevant for you, can you reproduce it with a newer or the latest release? Did you find a solution?

Tag: Feedback, Support, Documentation

Good question but I don't have an answer to that because I don't use passphrased keys.

[aryoda]

@dkebler Did you enable the checkbox "Save Password to Keyring" in the settings GUI (General > Mode: SSH)?

This requires using a keyring backend supported by BiT and some configuration (see #990 or #1321)...

[buhtz]

Is this a duplicate of #1146? If so can we close this issue then?

[aryoda]

Is this a duplicate of #1146? If so can we close this issue then?

Perhaps. Or a documentation issue (the scenarios when to use the password cache vs the keyring is not that intuitive to understand and the restrictions are not quite obvious in the GUI IMHO):

https://backintime.readthedocs.io/en/latest/settings.html#ssh

Basically:

• The password can be stored in the user keyring. The keyring is unlocked with the users password during login.
• When running a scheduled backup-job (via cron) while the user is not logged in, the keyring is not available.
• For this case (cron job with user not logged in), the password can be cached in memory by Back in Time.
• The cached password is lost after a reboot (AFAIR)

We should somehow make this more obvious in the GUI in the future.

[aryoda]

Possibly related to #1308