Keeping SSHKeychain Unlocked
Posted on January 11th, 2006
I've been using SSHKeychain for a few months to manage my SSH keys under OS X. But I kept getting prompted to enter my password—the keychain was automatically locking itself after a period of inactivity. And that was getting really really annoying.
The fix ends up being really simple. In the SSHKeychain Preferences window, the Security tab has a checkbox for "Use custom security settings." When checked, some additional settings are revealed. SSHKeychain's default settings cause the keychain to lock whenever the screensaver kicks on and after the system has been sleeping for a configurable amount of time. Changing both of these will get you a setup that matches what you'd have if you were using Putty and Pageant from Windows. You'll enter your password once during your initial login, and then you'll be good to go for the rest of the day.