STARTKEYCHAIN(1)

NAME
startkeychain - keychain launcher

SYNOPSIS
startkeychain [-cefh]

DESCRIPTION

keychain(1) is a manager for both ssh-agent and gpg-agent. It allows shells and cron jobs to share a single ssh-agent or gpg-agent process. keychain typically runs from the login shell environment setting, i.e ~/.shrc.

startkeychain is a companion script for keychain, designed to automate its usage. The script loads all SSH and GPG keys requested by the user, and updates the environment by sourcing the generated files found in the ~/.keychain directory.

OPTIONS
When used interactively, startkeychain accepts a number of options:

-c  wipes all existing cached keys/passphrases first.

-e  ensures that only the specified keys are loaded.

-f  allow keychain to use a forwarded ssh-agent connection.

-h  print usage.

ENVIRONMENT
The following environment variables affect the execution of startkeychain:

KCHOPTS
    This variable takes options for keychain like "--nocolor" or "--noask". See the keychain manpage for a full list. By default, startkeychain will pass `--quiet' to the keychain command line, making keychain only print messages in case of warning, error or required interactivity.

SSHKEYS
    This variable contains the list of keys to be loaded by their file names. The key list has to be space separated. If SSHKEYS is unset, startkeychain will attempt to load all user's ssh keys found in ~/.ssh, to an ssh-agent process

GPKEYS
    gpg keys to be loaded by keychain have to be specified by their key ID. The user can get a full list of keys and IDs in their secret keyring by running `gpg --list-secret-keys'. GPGKEYS defines a single key ID or a space separated list of key IDs. If GPGKEYS is unset, startkeychain will not attempt to load any.

Defaults may be overridden by either setting these variables on the command line, or inside a dedicated ~/.keychainrc configuration file. An example ~/.keychainrc may look as follows:

    KCHOPTS="--gpg2 --noask --quiet"
    SSHKEYS="user_rsa user_ed25519"
    GPGKEYS="user@netbsd.org

SEE ALSO
keychain(1), ssh-agent(1), gpg-agent(1)