x11-ssh-askpass1
Prompts an x user for a passphrase
Usage
ssh-askpass
Overview
This manual page documents briefly the ssh-askpass command. This manual page was written for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution because the original program does not have a manual page.
ssh-askpass (also known as x11-ssh-askpass) is an X11-based passphrase dialog for use with OpenSSH. It is intended to replace the Perl/Tk-based ssh-askpass dialog and GNOME-based ssh-askpass dialog which accompany OpenSSH-1.2.
These dialogs are intended to be called by the ssh-add(1) program and not invoked directly. They allow ssh-add(1) to obtain a passphrase from a user, even if not connected to a terminal (assuming that an X display is available). This happens automatically in the case where ssh-add is invoked from one's ~/.xsession or as one of the Gnome startup programs, for example.