Perhaps for more clarity, this almost does the same thing as doing: ssh -R22:localhost:9022 user@rhost -- ssh -A $USER@localhost -p 9022 In this case, for thi

Perhaps for more clarity, this almost does the same thing as doing: ssh -R22:localhost:9022 user@rhost -- ssh -A $USER@localhost -p 9022 In this case, for this to have feature-parity, another user on the remote system would have to access your socket and do an 'ssh-add' with one of their prive keys. The differences here being that: * rssh-agent daemonizes and gives the same output as 'ssh-agent'. * a single SSH connection is established, not two. It is again important to note that this allows you to use but private keys without filesystem access to those keys.