by the way, i solved the problem. SSH protocol 2 does not support RSA anymore, it's now using DSA. however, OpenSSH 2.x.x can speak SSH1.x with clients that are SSH1.x, and then it uses RSA. but whenever i was speaking to clients that are capable of SSH2, OpenSSH would use SSH2 and therefore not know anything about RSA keys. now i have DSA keys for my hosts and once i updated OpenSSH to 2.3.0, ssh-agent and ssh-add work as expected with RSA and DSA keys, although a bit awkward. does anyone know how to add both, RSA and DSA identities with only one password query, considering that the passphrases for both keys are identical? thanks, martin [greetings from the heart of the sun]# echo madduck@!#:1:s@\@@@.net -- a life? where can i download that?