Mendhak / Code

How to use KeeAgent with WSL and Ubuntu

How to serve SSH keys to ssh running in WSL (Ubuntu) from KeeAgent running in Windows 10.

Using KeeAgent with WSL

WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) has been gaining popularity in recent years, as it allows running an Ubuntu shell from within Windows. Its architecture involves a degree of separation and so there are additional steps to get ssh in WSL/Ubuntu talking to KeeAgent running in Windows.

This is a follow up to the previous post, Using KeePass to serve SSH keys.
This post also assumes you have already installed WSL

Get weasel-pageant

Although weasel-pageant is meant to allow usage of Pageant keys from WSL, it works just as well for our use case, since KeeAgent is also compatible with Putty.

Extract the zip in Windows, not in WSL. You can place it anywhere. If you’re keeping with the portable theme, it can be placed in a synched directory near Keepass and your KDBX.

KeeAgent downloaded

Tell WSL to use it

You will then need to tell WSL to talk to the weasel-pageant. In WSL, add the following lines to ~/.bashrc, remember to modify weaselpath to match the directory where you extracted weasel-pageant.

weaselpath="/mnt/c/Users/mendhak/Google Drive/Documents/keys/wsl-pageant-helper/"
echo -n "pageant loading, wait..."
"$weaselpath/weasel-pageant" -k> /dev/null 2> /dev/null
eval $("$weaselpath/weasel-pageant" -r -a "/tmp/.weasel-pageant-$USER")> /dev/null 2> /dev/null
sleep 1
sshkeysloaded=$(ssh-add -l | grep -c SHA)
if [[ $sshkeysloaded -gt 0 ]];  then
    echo -e "Loaded $sshkeysloaded keys."
else
    echo -e "Failed to load any keys."
fi
In WSL, Windows paths are prefixed with /mnt/c/ for C:, and paths with spaces require double quotes around them.
If you’ve changed your WSL mount point to /c/, be sure to reflect that in the path above.

Test it

Reload a WSL bash session and you should see pageant loading, wait... at the top. Once your bash prompt appears, test a connection to Github as usual.

ssh -T [email protected]

Testing Keeagent