SSHD starts and dies without any error messages
 

Hi Guys

Im running voyage linux on a little embedded soekris computer and am having trouble getting SSHD to start. If I start /etc/init.d/ssh start then it goes through the motions of starting but nothing shows up with ps and I cant login. If I type sshd then the same happens, but if I run it without it forking to the background then it seems to work fine.

Any suggestions?

heres my sshd_config

# What ports, IPs and protocols we listen for
Port 22
# Use these options to restrict which interfaces/protocols sshd will bind to
#ListenAddress ::
ListenAddress 0.0.0.0
Protocol 2
# HostKeys for protocol version 2
HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key
HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key
#Privilege Separation is turned on for security
UsePrivilegeSeparation yes

# Lifetime and size of ephemeral version 1 server key
KeyRegenerationInterval 3600
ServerKeyBits 768

# Logging
SyslogFacility AUTH
LogLevel INFO

# Authentication:
LoginGraceTime 600
PermitRootLogin yes
StrictModes yes

RSAAuthentication yes
PubkeyAuthentication yes
#AuthorizedKeysFile %h/.ssh/authorized_keys

# Don't read the user's ~/.rhosts and ~/.shosts files
IgnoreRhosts yes
# For this to work you will also need host keys in /etc/ssh_known_hosts
RhostsRSAAuthentication no
# similar for protocol version 2
HostbasedAuthentication no
# Uncomment if you don't trust ~/.ssh/known_hosts for RhostsRSAAuthentication
#IgnoreUserKnownHosts yes

# To enable empty passwords, change to yes (NOT RECOMMENDED)
PermitEmptyPasswords no

# Change to no to disable s/key passwords
#ChallengeResponseAuthentication yes

# Change to yes to enable tunnelled clear text passwords
PasswordAuthentication no


# To change Kerberos options
#KerberosAuthentication no
#KerberosOrLocalPasswd yes
#AFSTokenPassing no
#KerberosTicketCleanup no

# Kerberos TGT Passing does only work with the AFS kaserver
#KerberosTgtPassing yes

X11Forwarding no
X11DisplayOffset 10
PrintMotd no
PrintLastLog yes
KeepAlive yes
#UseLogin no

#MaxStartups 10:30:60
#Banner /etc/issue.net

Subsystem sftp /usr/lib/sftp-server

UsePAM yes

Where are you looking for errors?

On my system, they're in dmesg or /var/log/messages

Its highly unlikely that a fundamental software daemon will die without logging anything, and a segfault is quite unlikely, unless you have a dodgy compile?

Yep, I'm with you. Look in /var/log/messages for the sshd messages when you start it and it crashes.

Peace...

sorted it.


Because its an embedded system running on 64mb Flash it doesn't do any logging which is a pain, but I managed to trace the problem down to a malformed /dev/null. I thought i'd post the answer here as I've only found 1 other post on the net similar so if ever anyone gets stuck.....

Tom