[X2Go-User] Have x2go use Windows 10 default ssh-agent

[Johannes Töger]

Dear Uli,

Thanks for your quick response. Apologies - yes I sent the wrong link for the integration between Windows 10 OpenSSH client and WSL. This is the correct one: https://polansky.co/blog/a-better-windows-wsl-openssh-experience/

I think I'm almost there now. I'll put some more time into it later this week to see what I can find out.

Does the integrated libssh expect a unix-style socket?


— 
Johannes Töger

Associate Senior Lecturer
Cardiac MR Group
Department of Clinical Sciences Lund, Clinical Physiology
Lund University, Sweden

-----Original Message-----
From: Ulrich Sibiller <uli42 at gmx.de> 
Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 2020 11:03
To: Johannes Töger <johannes.toger at med.lu.se>
Cc: x2go-user at lists.x2go.org
Subject: Re: [X2Go-User] Have x2go use Windows 10 default ssh-agent

On Tue, Oct 20, 2020 at 10:27 AM Johannes Töger <johannes.toger at med.lu.se> wrote:
> Windows 10 comes with an “OpenSSH Authentication Agent” that manages 
> SSH keys. Once added, the SSH keys are kept in the Windows 10 
> Credential Storage and encrypted/decrypted with the user login. 
> Documentation here: 
> https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/openssh
> /openssh_keymanagement
>
> I was able to use this for ssh in WSL using this github repo: 
> https://github.com/bahamas10/windows-bash-ssh-agent

Well, I am bit confused now. The upper solution is using a windows service called ssh-agent which seems to be coupled to the Windows 10 Credential Storage. However, the lower solution is running the ssh-agent inside and shell session (bash.exe). Which looks to me like a standard ssh-agent that stores the keys in memory. The only trick here is to prevent the agent from being killed with the closing of the last bash.

So - for me - these are two distinct solutions to the same problem.
Please correct me if I got this wrong.

> Is it possible to have the Windows x2go client talk to the Windows 10 ssh-agent? I was able to do it using Pageant, but that is less convenient/integrated IMO.

It all depends on how these ssh-agents are accessible. Normally an ssh-agent is found using an environment variable called SSH_AUTH_SOCK.
If that variable is set accordingly by the above solutions x2goclient (or rather the integrated libssh) should already be enabled to it today (you already proved that by running pageant)

Uli