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emacssshpasswordstramp

Passwords in Emacs tramp mode editing


I'm using emacs tramp mode to remotely edit files over ssh. The problem is that every time I save the file I'm editing I have to enter my user password. I find that very annoying. How can I write my password only once / editing session?


Solution

  • Ah, from the tramp docs on password caching you can set:

    (setq password-cache-expiry nil)
    

    which requires the package password-cache.el.

    Also, in the tramp sources, it mentions reading the ssh-agent(1) man page, which shows how to set it up so that you don't have to re-enter passwords (inside, or outside of Emacs):

    There are two main ways to get an agent set up: The first is that the agent starts a new subcommand into which some environment variables are exported, eg ssh-agent xterm &. The second is that the agent prints the needed shell commands (either sh(1) or csh(1) syntax can be generated) which can be evalled in the calling shell, eg eval ssh-agent -s for Bourne-type shells such as sh(1) or ksh(1) and eval ssh-agent -c for csh(1) and derivatives.