If you do not wish to type your password in every time you use
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>ssh
</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1
</manvolnum></citerefentry>, and you use keys to authenticate,
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>ssh-agent
</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1
</manvolnum></citerefentry> is there for your convenience. If you want to use
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>ssh-agent
</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1
</manvolnum></citerefentry>, make sure that you run it before running other applications. X users, for example, usually do this from their
<filename>.xsession
</filename> or
<filename>.xinitrc
</filename>. See
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>ssh-agent
</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1
</manvolnum></citerefentry> for details.