Could not open a connection to your authentication agent.

January 29, 2013

If you ran into a message "Could not open a connection to your authentication agent." when type ssh-add, it must be that you don't have settings for ssh-agent.

$ ssh-agent
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/var/folders/sx/5z2568ss68997plzhw6qympw0000gn/T//ssh-9ikR207fRO4n/agent.64887; export SSH_AUTH_SOCK;
SSH_AGENT_PID=64888; export SSH_AGENT_PID;
echo Agent pid 64888;

Then you have to set it up. If you type ssh-agent, it prints like the above.

$ eval `ssh-agent`
$ ssh-add
Identity added: /your/home/.ssh/id_rsa (/your/home/.ssh/id_rsa)

You can evaluate the output. That worked, great.