[H-GEN] Desktop wars ..... (no not really)

David Starkoff dbs at uq.net.au
Sun Jun 29 06:12:07 EDT 2003


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At 2003-06-26T12:39-0400, Jason Parker-Burlingham wrote:

> >> From: "Robert Brockway" <robert at timetraveller.org>
> >>> # Allow ssh-agent to kick off the window manager ($MANAGER)
> >>> ssh-agent bash -c "ssh-add < /dev/null && $MANAGER"
> 
> I think this line could be simplified quite a bit:
> 
> eval `ssh-agent`    # get those environment vars going
> ssh-add && $MANAGER # start the window manager when the passphrase is
>                     # right

One subtle difference between Robert's line and Jason's has bitten me
before.  The ssh-agent(1) man page says:

     If a commandline is given, this is executed as a subprocess of
     the agent.  When the command dies, so does the agent.

If you restart X, you'll generally have an orphaned ssh-agent process
hanging around if you use Jason's version.  They're easy enough to
kill off and they don't take up much memory, but it's a bit of a
nuisance.

David.

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