Using RSA Keys with a Pass Phrase

[rajasun]

Hi,

We have a central OAM (Ops & Admin) server and many App servers. The auto SSH login (without password) is setup between the OAM server to other App servers. I am already using this setup for executing deployment and monitoring shell scripts remotely. The OAM server is a Red Hat server. All App Servers are AIX boxes.

I am currently trying to setup the ControlTier environment (both server & client) for OAM and App servers. OAM server is not able to communicate with App server nodes using SSH. It fails with 'Auth Cancel'. When I bypass SSH using a username & password for the App server nodes, it works. Below is the cmd output:
[pulse@nd-tr-u-rh-1 ctier]$ ctl-exec -I os-family=unix -- uptime
[pulse@AS1 ctl-exec][INFO]   09:46AM   up 17 days,  18:25,  0 users,  load average: 4.22, 3.61, 3.69
[pulse@CTS ctl-exec][INFO]  09:47:16 up 17 days, 19:58,  2 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.02, 0.00
error: com.jcraft.jsch.JSchException: Auth cancel

We use RSA keys with a pass phrase for SSH. I have changed the ctl-server's framework.properties to point to id_rsa key. But I dont find a way to give the pass-phrase required to open the key file.
(a) Could this be the reason for SSH failure
(b) How to configure the pass phrase to be used for the RSA key

Rgds,
Raja