what is ssh-sgent?

[andy baxter]

Hello,

Could someone tell me what ssh-agent is? I have the following process 
running on my computer, and I'm not sure what it does:

root at monkey:~# ps ax | grep 5474
 5474 ?        Ss     0:00 /usr/bin/ssh-agent /usr/bin/dbus-launch 
--exit-with-session x-session-manager
16932 pts/1    R+     0:00 grep 5474


thanks,

andy baxter.