Re: sign_and_send_pubkey: signing failed: agent refused operation

[Jonathan Wakely <jwakely.gcc@gmail.com>]

On Mon, 1 Jun 2020 at 20:46, Martin Sebor <msebor@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/1/20 1:25 PM, Jonathan Wakely wrote:
> > On Mon, 1 Jun 2020 at 20:16, Martin Sebor via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> On 6/1/20 12:10 PM, Frank Ch. Eigler wrote:
> >>> Hi -
> >>>
> >>>> git pull from the GCC and Glibc repos is failing for me with the error
> >>>> below.  It worked fine last week and I haven't made any changes to my
> >>>> ssh keys.
> >>>
> >>> And are you logging in from the same workstation with access to the same
> >>> set of ssh private keys?
> >>
> >> Yes.
> >>
> >>>
> >>>> Is this a transient glitch or has something changed recently that I
> >>>> need to make some adjustments for?
> >>>
> >>> I know of nothing relevant that has changed on the sourceware side.
> >>>
> >>>> sign_and_send_pubkey: signing failed: agent refused operation
> >>>> msebor@gcc.gnu.org: Permission denied (publickey).
> >>>> fatal: Could not read from remote repository.
> >>>
> >>> The usual advice is to run       % ssh -vv gcc.gnu.org alive
> >>> and report the ssh level error.
> >>>
> >>> "agent refused operation" sounds like a problem on the client end.
> >>
> >> Until last week, when I ran git pull from the GCC or Glibc repo
> >> I'd get prompted for my password.  I'd either type it in or hit
> >> ctrl-C, enter ssh-add, and start over.
> >>
> >> After deleting ~/.ssh/known_hosts to resolve the problem I asked
> >> about last week (Re: ssh key conflicts), I'm no longer prompted
> >> for my password.  Instead, I get the error above.
> >
> > Is ~/.ssh/known_hosts no longer present? Is ~/.ssh writable by your
> > user? The ssh client (or the agent) will try to create
> > ~/.ssh/known_hosts if it doesn't exist, to add the host key. If ~/.ssh
> > is not writable that will fail.
>
> ~/.ssh/known_hosts exists and ~/.ssh is rwx only by the owner.
> Everything works fine if I add my key by running ssh-add.  What's
> not so great is the errors I get when I forget to do that: "agent
> refused operation?"

Is $SSH_ASKPASS set in your environment? Does running the command it's
set to work?

Are you using the openssh agent, or something else like gpg-agent or
GNOME keyring?

It's not a server-side error though. The server can't prevent your
agent from prompting you for your key's passphrase.