ssh-askpass-noinput1

Usage

Overview

ssh-askpass-noinput is an implementation of ssh-askpass, which does not actually ask for a password; instead, it only asks a binary (allow/deny) question and exits with 0 for allow and 1 for deny.

It is not intended as a general replacement for ssh-askpass, but for special applications that don’t care about a passphrase.

Options

As usual with ssh-askpass implementations, ssh-askpass-noinput only takes a single argument, which will be presented as the question.

Background and applications

Some programs (ssh-agent and ssh-agent-filter) use ssh-askpass to have users confirm actions without entering a passphrase; ssh-agent does this when used via ssh-add’s -c option. They do not indicate that it is a binary question (because in the classical ssh-agent invocation, there is no option to do this), and expect the user to ignore the text input and click “OK” or “Cancel”, whereupon they read the askpass’s exit status.

With programs that are known to only ask those questions, setting SSH_ASKPASS=ssh-askpass-noinput in their environment will make them use this particular implementation for their questions. It should never be installed as /usr/bin/ssh-askpass.

Future

This solution is obviously a hack, which is needed until a way is established and implemented for ssh-askpass to be used more flexibly.