SUMMARY Connecting to a remote host that is not already known produces a prompt sent to the askpass program that ksshaskpass does not recognize. It's not unusable, I can type "yes" or "no" into the text field, but it does produce a slightly annoying line of text in the console: ksshaskpass: Unable to parse phrase "The authenticity of host 'github.com (140.82.113.3)' can't be established.\nRSA key fingerprint is SHA256:nThbg6kXUpJWGl7E1IGOCspRomTxdCARLviKw6E5SY8.\nThis key is not known by any other names\nAre you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])? " STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. Have an empty ~/.ssh/known_hosts 2. export SSH_ASKPASS=/usr/bin/ksshaskpass SSH_ASKPASS_REQUIRE=prefer 3. ssh git@github.com OBSERVED RESULT The line of text is produced EXPECTED RESULT ksshaskpass knows how to handle this question/prompt from OpenSSH SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Linux/KDE Plasma: Arch Linux on kernel version 5.14.15-arch-1 (available in About System) KDE Plasma Version: 5.23.2 KDE Frameworks Version: 5.87.0 Qt Version: 5.15.2 OpenSSH Version: OpenSSH_8.8p1, OpenSSL 1.1.1l 24 Aug 2021
Still affects 5.27.10. Fixing this should be rather trivial by adding a pattern in https://github.com/KDE/ksshaskpass/blob/v5.27.10/src/main.cpp#L37
Still affects 6.4.4.
On it: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/ksshaskpass/-/merge_requests/31
Git commit 4b7856dc490a5f6c9c995766bfe56a12111bb5b6 by David Edmundson, on behalf of Taras Oleksyn. Committed on 13/10/2025 at 10:56. Pushed by davidedmundson into branch 'master'. Add pattern matching for the unknown SSH host key case: The authenticity of host 'github.com (140.82.113.3)' can't be established... FIXED-IN: 6.6 M +36 -4 src/main.cpp https://invent.kde.org/plasma/ksshaskpass/-/commit/4b7856dc490a5f6c9c995766bfe56a12111bb5b6