Capistrano asks for password when deploying, despite SSH keys

Executing ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa in my local machine fixed the issue for me. It seemed that the ssh command line tool wasn't detecting my identity when called with Capistrano.

The password prompt is because the server you are deploying to is connecting to the git server and needs authentication. Since your local machine (where you are deploying from) already has a valid ssh-key, use that one by enabling forwarding in your Capfile:

set :ssh_options, {:forward_agent => true}

That forwards the authentication from your local machine through when the deployment server tries to connect to your git server.

This is much preferred to putting your private key out on the deployment server!

Another way of getting around the password prompt when the server is ssh'ing back on itself is to tell capistrano not to do so. Thanks to the 'readme' section for Daniel Quimper's capistrano-site5 github repo, we note the following:

set :deploy_via, :copy

Obviously, this works for the case where both the app and git repository are being hosted on the same host. But I guess some of us are doing that :)

I've had the same problem.

This line did'nt work:

set :ssh_options, {:forward_agent => true}

Then I executed mentioned on Dreamhost wiki

[local ~]$ eval `ssh-agent`[local ~]$ ssh-add ~/.ssh/yourpublickey  # omit path if using default keyname

And now I can deploy without password.