Mac OS X Sierra and SSH keys

With OS X Sierra Apple changed the ssh client key handling behavior. They aligned with OpenSSH behavior by not automatically loading passphrases from the keychain on login. More surprisingly, it now remembers your ssh key passphrase automatically by default. To disable this behavior you can add this to ~/.ssh/config:

Host *
    UseKeyChain no

As you can see in the radar report, deleting keys using "ssh-add -D" seems to be just as problematic and confusing as it is with gnome-keyring, i.e. "All identities removed" is a lie.

For deleting already saved passwords and re-instating the El-Cap ssh behavior see here.

Prevent system management from installing over a test package on Ubuntu

When you are testing a new package version it's annoying to have your system management come and install the old version over the top of your test one. There's a bunch of ways to stop this, the one I tend to use on Ubuntu is:

echo "package hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections

To undo the hold and go back to normal:

echo "package install" | sudo dpkg --set-selections