IIRC, gnome does this as well.  yeah, i know, that's a crappy argument.  the fix
for this isn't actually that hard; i'll give it a look tonight.

fixed in CVS (after the usual anoncvs delay)

Fix confirmed.  Thanks!

I seem to still suffer this problem in 4.1.91
can anyone offer me some advice?

do you have a custom ~/.config/xfce4/xinitrc left over from before the bug was
fixed?  if so, you'll need to copy the new one from $prefix/etc/xdg/xfce4/ and
merge in any changes you had made.

the only things I have in that directory are:
ls -l .config/xfce4
total 17
-rw-r--r--  1 johnm users  70 Nov 12 00:17 Xft.xrdb
-rw-r--r--  1 johnm users 190 Nov 13 18:33 afhistory
drwx------  2 johnm users 104 Nov 13 11:49 desktop
-rw-r--r--  1 johnm users   6 Nov 17 00:14 ls-iconbox.rc
drwx------  2 johnm users 520 Nov 17 00:34 mcs_settings
drwx------  2 johnm users 112 Nov 17 00:34 panel
-rw-------  1 johnm users 604 Nov 12 17:11 printsettings.xml
drwx------  2 johnm users 112 Nov 12 17:51 xfcalendar
drwxr-x---  2 johnm users 112 Nov 12 17:27 xffm
drwx------  2 johnm users  48 Nov 12 00:15 xfwm4

--
im not too sure what is actually cuasing this problem, but ssh-agent is being
spawned when starting xfce4 which isnt desired :(

ah, i see.  this isn't a bug about ssh-agent being started.  it's about it not
getting killed on quit.  if you want to disable the auto start of ssh-agent,
you'll need to copy $sysconfdir/xdg/xfce4/xinitrc to ~/.config/xfce4/ and edit
it to remove the line that starts ssh-agent.

really though, i don't see why it matters.  it has rather small memory footprint
and doesn't hurt anything if you don't use it.  IIRC both gnome and KDE start
ssh-agent in their startup script (not that that really matters).

you are correct, of course leaving it running doesnt matter.
however the xinitrc file makes the assumption that there is no ssh-agent already
runningfor that user id.
in my case, there will already be an ssh-agent running, causing a duplicate
which triggers the problem.
killing it once you leave the xfce session is fine (although in my case I would
still prefer it didnt do this)

for example, my .bash_profile has this in it:

#ssh-agent
if [ -x "$(which ssh-agent)" ] ;
then
        [ -x "$(which x11-ssh-askpass 2>/dev/null)"  ] && SSH_ASKPASS="$(which
x11-ssh-askpass)"
        [ -x "$(which gtk2-ssh-askpass 2>/dev/null)" ] && SSH_ASKPASS="$(which
gtk2-ssh-askpass)"
        [ -z "${DISPLAY}" ] && unset SSH_ASKPASS
        export SSH_ASKPASS="${SSH_ASKPASS}"

        SSH_AGENT_PID="$(ps -C ssh-agent -o pid=)"
        SSH_AGENT_PID=${SSH_AGENT_PID/ /}
        if [ -n "${SSH_AGENT_PID}" ] ;
        then
                SSH_AUTH_SOCK=$(find /tmp -type s -iregex ".*ssh.*" -user $(id
-u) 2>/dev/null)

                echo ">>> ssh-agent already running."
                echo ">   active PID:  ${SSH_AGENT_PID}"
                echo ">   active SOCK: ${SSH_AUTH_SOCK}"
        else
                SSH_AUTH_SOCK="$(ssh-agent)"
                SSH_AGENT_PID="$(ps -C ssh-agent -o pid=)"
                SSH_AUTH_SOCK=${SSH_AUTH_SOCK/;*/}
                SSH_AUTH_SOCK=${SSH_AUTH_SOCK/*=/}

                echo ">>> ssh-agent launched."
                echo ">   active PID:  ${SSH_AGENT_PID}"
                echo ">   active SOCK: ${SSH_AUTH_SOCK}"
        fi
        export SSH_AGENT_PID="${SSH_AGENT_PID}"
        export SSH_AUTH_SOCK="${SSH_AUTH_SOCK}"

        for i in $(find ${HOME}/.ssh/ -type f -iname "id*" -not -iname "*.pub")
        do
                [ -z "$(ssh-add -l | grep ${i})" ] && sshkeys="${sshkeys} ${i}"
        done

        for i in ${sshkeys}
        do
                echo ">   adding ${i}"
        done
        [ -n "${sshkeys}" ] && `ssh-add -c ${sshkeys} 2>/dev/null`

        echo
fi

although maybe not the most elegant, it serves the purpose.
could we not do this in the xfce xinitrc as well (since I found out I can copy
the xfce btw its worked fine :) thanks)
and if we found that we didnt launch ssh-agent, then we shouldn't kill it when
we leave the session.
we should only kill it if xfce was the thing that spawned it.

I also have a very similar thing for gpg-agent, which perhaps you might consider
adding to xfce4 xinitrc also.
the code for that is:

#gpg-agent
if [ -x "$(which gpg-agent)" ] ;
then
        GPG_AGENT_PID="$(ps -C gpg-agent -o pid=)"
        GPG_AGENT_PID=${GPG_AGENT_PID/ /}
        if [ -n "${GPG_AGENT_PID}" ] ;
        then
                GPG_AGENT_INFO=$(find /tmp -type s -iregex ".*gpg.*" -user $(id
-u) 2>/dev/null)
                GPG_AGENT_INFO="${GPG_AGENT_INFO}:${GPG_AGENT_PID}:1"

                echo ">>> gpg-agent already running."
                echo ">   active PID:  ${GPG_AGENT_PID}"
                echo ">   active INFO: ${GPG_AGENT_INFO}"
        else
                GPG_AGENT_INFO=$(gpg-agent --daemon)
                GPG_AGENT_INFO=${GPG_AGENT_INFO/;*/}
                GPG_AGENT_PID=${GPG_AGENT_INFO/*gent:/}
                GPG_AGENT_PID=${GPG_AGENT_PID/:*/}

                echo ">>> gpg-agent launched."
                echo ">   active PID:  ${GPG_AGENT_PID}"
                echo ">   active INFO: ${GPG_AGENT_INFO}"
        fi
        export GPG_AGENT_PID="${GPG_AGENT_PID}"
        export GPG_AGENT_INFO="${GPG_AGENT_INFO}"
        echo
fi

regards.

i don't really want to put that much into xinitrc, but i'll modify it so it
first checks to see if ssh-agent is running before it tries itself.