¬ just serendipity 🍀 (not just serendipity)

Previously, previously.

After experiencing almost daily frustration because of this SSH auth issue, I decided to script a solution out of it: and now ssh_mux_restart was born.

A copy of the README.md follows below for ease of reference.

The use case is very simple: run the ssh_mux_restart script whenever I run into a git SSH authentication error, typically due to git pull, git fetch or git push.

Usage #

Basic usage to kill SSH multiplexed connections:

./ssh_mux_restart.sh

To also restart the 1Password SSH agent:

./ssh_mux_restart.sh --restart-1password

Example Output #

% ./ssh_mux_restart.sh
Finding SSH multiplexed connections...
Found SSH multiplexed connections:
  88002 ssh: /tmp/ssh-control-FLAPJACK42 [mux]
  88123 ssh: /tmp/ssh-control-WAFFLE55 [mux]
Killing SSH multiplexed connections...
✓ Killed SSH mux process: 88002
✓ Killed SSH mux process: 88123
Killed 2/2 SSH multiplexed connections.

All operations completed successfully!

With the --restart-1password flag:

% ./ssh_mux_restart.sh --restart-1password
Finding SSH multiplexed connections...
Found SSH multiplexed connections:
  88002 ssh: /tmp/ssh-control-PANCAKE99 [mux]
Killing SSH multiplexed connections...
✓ Killed SSH mux process: 88002
Killed 1/1 SSH multiplexed connections.

Restarting 1Password application...
Found 1Password process: 67690
Quitting 1Password...
✓ 1Password quit successfully
Starting 1Password...
✓ 1Password started successfully
1Password SSH agent is now ready for use.

All operations completed successfully!

Why This Matters #

SSH multiplexed connections can cache stale authentication credentials, causing issues when:

• GitHub organizations enable or enforce SAML SSO
• 1Password SSH agent credentials need refreshing
• SSH keys have been rotated or updated

Restarting these connections forces SSH to re-authenticate with fresh credentials.

Prerequisites #

• Standard Unix tools (pgrep, pkill)
• 1Password app (macOS) if using the --restart-1password flag