Having just changed my login password on my new Linux box I have discovered that there's an application called 'seahorse' lurking in the background.
After changing my password seahorse pops up a window when you log in to X demanding that you enter a password - what it's asking for is the *old* password which it has stashed away somewhere itself.
What isn't clear though is what seahorse is for and reading the Help is no 'help' at all, it just tells you how to drive the program, which is fine in itself but doesn't help me at all in working out what it does.
Can anyone here help? Does seahorse do the same as ssh-agent? Does it do it 'automagically' when you log in to X using your login password? I've found the seahorse home page http://projects.gnome.org/seahorse/index.html and that tells me just about nothing. The best there is (on the 'about' page) is:-
With seahorse you can...
* Create and manage PGP keys * Create and manage SSH keys * Publish and retrive keys from key servers * Cache your passphrase so you don't have to keep typing it * Backup your keys and keyring * more...
It's rather a fundamental security thing to 'just happen' behind your back!