Here’s the scenario:

  1. You’re sitting at your desktop, and you start a Screen session.
  2. You do a bunch of work (say, lots of vim and a git commit); and then rush off.
  3. You log in remotely, reconnect your Screen session with screen -dR, and try to do something that uses an SSH key (say, you git push to github).
  4. Your SSH session mysteriously hangs.
  5. A Ctrl-C later and a head-scratch later, you run ssh -v git@github.com, and you get as far as debug1: Server accepts key: pkalg ssh-rsa ...

Meanwhile, back on your desktop at home, GNOME has popped up this dialog:

GNOME says, 'Enter password to unlock private key'

Bollocks.

The Fix

To stop this happening again, run the following:

$ sudo gconftool-2 --set -t bool /apps/gnome-keyring/daemon-components/ssh false