[pygtk] applet with ssh - passphrase problem

[Peter Robinson]

I am writing an applet to manage an sshfs mount.

The code that mounts the file system is
retcode = subprocess.call(['sshfs', self.mountfilesys, self.mountpt])

I have set up my ssh connection to require a passphrase.

When I add the applet to the panel and call the above code it asks for 
my passphrase.
If I run the app as stand alone then it does the mount without requiring 
the passphrase (because pam is handling things)

Why do I get different behaviours and how can I fix the problem?

Peter Robinson