[Solved] sshd Does Not Run At System Startup (Ubuntu)

Problem:

• sshd does not appear to start on system boot, but runs fine when started from a terminal with /etc/init.d/ssh start

Update Dec 2010: Thanks to Jeremie here. Change the following in /etc/init.d./ssh to stop sshd starting before the network is ready:

Change:

# Required-Start:       $remote_fs $syslog 

to:

# Required-Start:       $remote_fs $syslog $network

Merci Jeremie!

Cause and Solution:

• A ListenServer directive in /etc/ssh/sshd_config is making sshd attempt to listen on a not-yet extant address. Change the directive to ListenServer 0.0.0.0

(NB: if you don’t have an /etc/init.d/ssh, you can get one from here)

I had a problem with a machine I am using as a samba fileserver. It would seem that the sshd process was not running at startup, so I would have to log into Gnome and run /etc/init.d/ssh start manually, which was a pain in the arse.

A quick search turned nothing up, except “make sure openssh-server is installed”, which in my case it was. I was about to post to the Ubuntu forums, but first I had a quick look at the syslog (which sshd prints to), where I saw entries like the following:


Jun 27 13:18:56 hermes init: ssh main process (802) terminated with status 255
Jun 27 13:18:56 hermes init: ssh main process ended, respawning
Jun 27 13:18:56 hermes init: ssh main process (806) terminated with status 255
Jun 27 13:18:56 hermes init: ssh main process ended, respawning
Jun 27 13:18:56 hermes init: ssh main process (810) terminated with status 255
Jun 27 13:18:56 hermes init: ssh main process ended, respawning
Jun 27 13:18:56 hermes init: ssh main process (814) terminated with status 255
Jun 27 13:18:56 hermes init: ssh main process ended, respawning
Jun 27 13:18:56 hermes init: ssh main process (818) terminated with status 255
Jun 27 13:18:56 hermes init: ssh main process ended, respawning
Jun 27 13:18:56 hermes init: ssh main process (822) terminated with status 255
Jun 27 13:18:56 hermes init: ssh main process ended, respawning
Jun 27 13:18:56 hermes init: ssh main process (826) terminated with status 255
Jun 27 13:18:56 hermes init: ssh respawning too fast, stopped


My thinking is that sshd was trying to start up before the network interfaces were configured, which was causing it to fail as it had a ListenAddress directive in /etc/ssh/sshd_config.

Commenting out the specific ListenAddress directive and adding ListenAddress 0.0.0.0 to let sshd listen on any address solved the problem. The fileserver has only 1 IP address anyway.