macos - .ssh/config: "Bad configuration option: UseKeychain" on Mac OS Sierra 10.12.6

Question

I am trying to set up my ssh config on the Mac (Mac OS Sierra 10.12.6) in such a way that it stores the passphrase for my ssh key in the keychain. Previously I could do that with

ssh-add -K ~/.ssh/id_rsa

But recently this doesn't seem to work anymore. Following this article there seems to be a change in the behaviour of the ssh config in Mac OS > 10.12.2 and the recommended way to fix this issue is to add UseKeychain yes to your ssh config. So here's my .ssh/config section the Host *:

Host *
  Port 22
  ServerAliveInterval 60
  ForwardAgent yes
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa
  AddKeysToAgent yes
  UseKeychain yes

When trying to ssh to a foreign host, I get the following error message:

$ ssh my-host
/Users/USER/.ssh/config: line 16: Bad configuration option: usekeychain

Any ideas why this happens and how I can fix it? Thanks!

Answer 1

Try to specify another option, namely IgnoreUnknown like below:

Host *
  IgnoreUnknown UseKeychain
  UseKeychain yes

You can find more info about this here.

If you already have an IgnoreUnknown value, use comma separated values

Host *
  IgnoreUnknown AddKeysToAgent,UseKeychain
  AddKeysToAgent yes
  UseKeychain yes

If you have multiple Host configs that use the UseKeychain option, make sure to put

Host *
  IgnoreUnknown UseKeychain

before the first host that uses the the option, e.g. put it at the top of the file.