How To Install keychain on Debian 10

Learn how to install keychain on Debian 10 with this tutorial. keychain is key manager for OpenSSH

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install keychain on Debian 10.

What is keychain

keychain is:

Keychain is an OpenSSH key manager, typically run from ~/.bash_profile. When keychain is run, it checks for a running ssh-agent, otherwise it starts one. It saves the ssh-agent environment variables to ~/.keychain/${HOSTNAME}-sh, so that subsequent logins and non-interactive shells such as cron jobs can source the file and make passwordless ssh connections. In addition, when keychain runs, it verifies that the key files specified on the command-line are known to ssh-agent, otherwise it loads them, prompting you for a password if necessary.

There are three methods to install keychain on Debian 10. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install keychain Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install keychain using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install keychain

Install keychain Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install keychain using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install keychain

Install keychain Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Debian. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install keychain using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install keychain

How To Uninstall keychain on Debian 10

To uninstall only the keychain package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove keychain

Uninstall keychain And Its Dependencies

To uninstall keychain and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Debian 10, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove keychain

Remove keychain Configurations and Data

To remove keychain configuration and data from Debian 10 we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge keychain

Remove keychain configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove keychain configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge keychain

Dependencies

keychain have the following dependencies:

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install keychain package on Debian 10 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.