In 2017 on Taming the Terminal installment 37 of n, Bart taught us about SSH agents and the advantages of using a passphrase to further protect your SSH keys. In the intervening four years, things have changed a bit in macOS, so we decided to do a supplemental update to installment 37. We review a bit about what SSH Keys are (from installment 30) and then discuss how much easier and cleaner things are on macOS with the clean integration of your identity, passphrase and Apple’s Keychain.
You can find the replaced show notes for TTT 37 at ttt.bartificer.net/… and you can find the podcast under Taming the Terminal or the full Chit Chat Across the Pond feed.
If you’ve downloaded the Taming the Terminal book, please go to podfeet.com/tttbook to get a fresh version with the updated notes.
I’ve not yet updated the book in Apple Books but I’m trying. I’ll certainly pass along the info when I succeed, but it appears I need a very old Apple app entitled iTunes Producer to update the book. iTunes Producer is so old it doesn’t support two-factor authentication, which means I have to have Apple generate an app-specific password at appleid.apple.com. No worries, I’ve done that before and it works quite well, except iTunes Producer does not accept the generated app-specific password created by Apple’s service. If I can’t figure this out, I may have to make a trip to the Phone Call of Sadness™️.