Re: sign_and_send_pubkey: signing failed: agent refused operation

[Martin Sebor <msebor@gmail.com>]

On 6/1/20 1:53 PM, Frank Ch. Eigler wrote:
> Hi -
> 
>> ~/.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?"
> 
> Yeah, there is something odd on your side.  Maybe your ssh client is
> unable to find the right private key - maybe it's named non-default?
> If so, add it to your .ssh/config
> 
>     Host gcc.gnu.org sourceware.org
>         IdentifyFile ~/.ssh/id_XYZ
> 
>> It just feels like too much of a coincidence that I started having
>> these problems only after the recent server upgrade.  [...]
> 
> I'm afraid it does look like a coincidence.

So it sounds like you wouldn't expect the "agent refused operation"
error either, and it's not just a poor error message that I should
learn to live with.  That makes me think I should try to figure out
what's wrong.  I think the ~/.ssh/ contents are pretty standard:

$ ls -l ~/.ssh/
total 32
-rw-------. 1 msebor msebor  998 Jan  3  2019 authorized_keys
-rw-------. 1 msebor msebor 1381 Jan  3  2019 id_dsa
-rw-------. 1 msebor msebor  603 Jan  3  2019 id_dsa.pub
-rw-------. 1 msebor msebor 1876 Dec 18  2018 id_rsa
-rw-------. 1 msebor msebor  395 Dec 18  2018 id_rsa.pub
-rw-------. 1 msebor msebor  187 Jun  1 13:41 known_hosts

I'm not a Git or ssh power user so I don't change default settings
unless I absolutely have to.  It's also been a while since I updated
my workstation so I can't think of anything that could be behind this.

Do you have any suggestions what else to look at?

Martin