The situation with beginner-friendly SSH tutorials is, in a much lesser degree perhaps, comparable to the crypto texts: Good will alone does more harm than goo

The situation with beginner-friendly SSH tutorials is, in a much lesser degree perhaps, comparable to the crypto texts: Good will alone does more harm than good. This treatment ssh does not mention ssh-agent and, more importantly perhaps, implies that there is a certain virtue in having private keys unprotected by sturdy passphrases lying around. There is not; most emphatically not.