Jenkins plugin ssh-agent showing "ERROR: Failed to run ssh-add"

Question

I getting error "ERROR: Failed to run ssh-add" I am trying to ssh into remote machine so

SSH credential are set Pipeline script is calling ssh-agent On executing the job I get error below

I have tried this reported bug https://issues.jenkins-ci.org/browse/JENKINS-50181 but it is not working and bug has been already resolved in latest version 1.17 which i have now. Can anyone suggest how to fix this issue.

score 15 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 04 '19 at 10:57

15

This is just a wild guess since this could have different reasons.

But I just had this error, and my problem was that when I created the credential in Jenkins I forgot to add a linebreak at the end of the input.

...
...<all the usual content>...
...
-----END OPENSSH PRIVATE KEY-----<linebreak needed here>

answered Dec 04 '19 at 10:57

peedee

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This also was the problem in my case. – Brandon Squizzato Dec 19 '19 at 03:15
I've also faced with this issue! Thanks! – Kerb Jan 24 '20 at 11:25
This has not solved it for me which type of key was used? for example RSA – clD Jan 29 '20 at 16:00
Thank you so much, after hours looking around the linebreak did solve the issue for me too. – filipeportes Aug 13 '20 at 13:55
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Wow thank you so much. I swapped out some keys and everything stopped working. All our releases broken. Couldnt figure this out. Post your cashapp so i can send you some money lol – Chris Maggiulli Feb 04 '21 at 15:47

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 21 '20 at 18:23

3

I got this error when I put the SSH public key into the Jenkins credential instead of properly putting the private key.

Note that the private key is the long one that looks like this:

-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
... lots of unreadable random characters for many lines ...
-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----

answered Aug 21 '20 at 18:23

Lee Meador

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Same issue in my end. – JeanCarlos Chavarria Aug 31 '20 at 21:56

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 22 '21 at 12:07

I got this error when I didn't put they private key's passphrase into Jenkins.

I thought the key didn't have a passphrase because I wasn't having to enter it when using the key manually. It turns out my local keyring was automatically taking care of this.

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 07 '22 at 04:25

I ran into this problem after copying the credentials.xml file from an old installation to a new one. The key appears to be stored in a hashed format in the credentials.xml file and may be the hash is unique based on the version of jenkins. I just had to find the private key on my system and then paste it in the UI along with the additional line break as suggested by @peedee

PiotrS · Answer 5 · 2023-02-02T09:41:59.167

0

I had the same issue when I tried to use OpenSSH key format in Jenkins credentials - remote session always fails with ERROR: Failed to run ssh-add.

The solution was to provide a PEM key generated with -m PEM flag. So the private key format should be: "-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----" instead of "-----BEGIN OPENSSH PRIVATE KEY-----" etc.

edited Feb 02 '23 at 09:41

answered Feb 02 '23 at 09:38

PiotrS

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Jenkins plugin ssh-agent showing "ERROR: Failed to run ssh-add"

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