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SSH Agent error after restarting computer

August 2022

After restarting my computer (Macbook/OS X), I often face problems in connecting with my AWS EC2 instances via Jumphost (also called as Bastion host).

Error

The agent has no identities

Fix

ssh-add -K ~/.ssh/id_rsa
ssh-add -A

On latest version of OS X, you can add UseKeychain yes to your ~/.ssh/config

Host *
  UseKeychain yes

Explanation

SSH Agent holds decrypted keys in memory and doesn’t write to disk. Hence, the keys must be unlocked after each restart. On OS X, ssh-add has a special flag related to Keychain. While this flag (-K) is a bit hard to find, however it works on most of the OS X versions.