How can I get jenkins-cli.jar to use my ssh agent/keychain?

Question

I'm using the jenkins-cli.jar file from my jenkins server, and on every run it prompts me for my ssh key passphrase. I'd like it to use my ssh keychain so I don't have to enter it on every invocation.

If it matters, I'm on OSX using the default keychain setup, I don't have a manual ssh-agent configured right now.

Cash

Answer 1

Jenkins CLI client does not support SSH agents for now.

As a workaround, you can generate dedicated key without passphrase, associate it with your Jenkins account and instruct client to use that key on every invocation.

Hiroshige

And here is the bug tracking this issue issues.jenkins-ci.org/browse/JENKINS-45320 -- feel free to comment there. – Chemoreceptor

Until now it was not improved, perhaps there is a special plugin that solved this? – Genuine

@ManuelJordan, Jenkins CLI client (part of Jenkins core) needs to have the support for local SSH agent. Plugins cannot contribute such logic. They can implement alternative CLI client, though, but I am not aware of anyone that would. – Dwanadwane

@OliverGondža Thanks for the feedback, in the JIRA issue remains without solution. If the " SSH-based CLI with regular SSH clients" can be really improved to have the same set of features like the java -jar approach would be excellent. I think I am going to create a JIRA issue about that. – Genuine