Unable to launch SSH daemon automatically at start-up

[emma_peel]

Hello Ubuntu forum.

It is my first post on this forum, so if they are some specific rules or requirement, do not hesitate to explain.

I have installed Kubuntu for desktop on my laptop a couple of days ago and feel quite satisfied. Moreover, I really impressed by the Ubuntu documentation, which is very extensive, detailed and easy-to-read.

I am now facing a small issue. I want to have the daemon SSH automatically started up on boot. So I have done a classical :


sudo update-rc.d ssh defaults

I tried with another priority :


sudo update-rc.d -f ssh remove
sudo update-rc.d ssh start 50 2 3 4 5 . stop 50 0 1 6 .

Everything looks OK :


arnaud@KubuntuBox:~$ ls /etc/rc*
/etc/rc.local

/etc/rc0.d:
K01kdm K74bluetooth S31umountnfs.sh
K02usplash K99laptop-mode S35networking
K20apport README S40umountfs
K25hwclock.sh S01linux-restricted-modules-common S60umountroot
K50alsa-utils S15wpa-ifupdown S90halt
K50ssh S20sendsigs
K63mountoverflowtmp S30urandom

/etc/rc1.d:
K01kdm K20acpi-support K21apmd K88dbus S30killprocs
K02usplash K20apport K39ufw K89klogd S70bootlogs.sh
K11anacron K20hotkey-setup K50ssh K90sysklogd S70dns-clean
K11atd K20rsync K74bluetooth K99laptop-mode S70pppd-dns
K11cron K20saned K80cups K99policykit S90single
K16hal K21acpid K86avahi-daemon README

/etc/rc2.d:
README S20hotkey-setup S50saned S98usplash
S01policykit S24hal S50ssh S99acpi-support
S10acpid S25bluetooth S70bootlogs.sh S99laptop-mode
S10apmd S30kdm S70dns-clean S99ondemand
S10sysklogd S50avahi-daemon S70pppd-dns S99rc.local
S11klogd S50cups S89anacron S99rmnologin
S12dbus S50NetworkManager S89atd S99stop-readahead
S20apport S50rsync S89cron

/etc/rc3.d:
README S20hotkey-setup S50saned S98usplash
S01policykit S24hal S50ssh S99acpi-support
S10acpid S25bluetooth S70bootlogs.sh S99laptop-mode
S10apmd S30kdm S70dns-clean S99ondemand
S10sysklogd S50avahi-daemon S70pppd-dns S99rc.local
S11klogd S50cups S89anacron S99rmnologin
S12dbus S50NetworkManager S89atd S99stop-readahead
S20apport S50rsync S89cron

/etc/rc4.d:
README S20hotkey-setup S50saned S98usplash
S01policykit S24hal S50ssh S99acpi-support
S10acpid S25bluetooth S70bootlogs.sh S99laptop-mode
S10apmd S30kdm S70dns-clean S99ondemand
S10sysklogd S50avahi-daemon S70pppd-dns S99rc.local
S11klogd S50cups S89anacron S99rmnologin
S12dbus S50NetworkManager S89atd S99stop-readahead
S20apport S50rsync S89cron

/etc/rc5.d:
README S20hotkey-setup S50saned S98usplash
S01policykit S24hal S50ssh S99acpi-support
S10acpid S25bluetooth S70bootlogs.sh S99laptop-mode
S10apmd S30kdm S70dns-clean S99ondemand
S10sysklogd S50avahi-daemon S70pppd-dns S99rc.local
S11klogd S50cups S89anacron S99rmnologin
S12dbus S50NetworkManager S89atd S99stop-readahead
S20apport S50rsync S89cron

/etc/rc6.d:
K01kdm K74bluetooth S31umountnfs.sh
K02usplash K99laptop-mode S35networking
K20apport README S40umountfs
K25hwclock.sh S01linux-restricted-modules-common S60umountroot
K50alsa-utils S15wpa-ifupdown S90reboot
K50ssh S20sendsigs
K63mountoverflowtmp S30urandom

/etc/rcS.d:
README S35mountall.sh
S01mountkernfs.sh S36mountall-bootclean.sh
S01readahead S37apparmor
S02hostname.sh S37mountoverflowtmp
S06keyboard-setup S37udev-finish
S07linux-restricted-modules-common S39readahead-desktop
S10udev S39ufw
S11mountdevsubfs.sh S40networking
S13pcmciautils S45mountnfs.sh
S15module-init-tools S46mountnfs-bootclean.sh
S17procps S49console-setup
S20checkroot.sh S55bootmisc.sh
S22mtab.sh S55urandom
S25brltty S70screen-cleanup
S30checkfs.sh S70x11-common

Please note the the conf file is OK. When manually started up, I can connect to my laptop without any problem

I suspect some dependencies or something like that.

Any idea will help.

Thank you in advance for your support !

[hrod beraht]

I want to have the daemon SSH automatically started up on boot.

Assuming you have installed openssh-server, it will start from /etc/init.d/ssh. If the server has been installed and the /etc/init.d/ssh file exists but doesn't seem to work, I'd execute a dpkg-reconfigure openssh-server.

Bob

[emma_peel]

Hello Hrod & thank you for the reply.

I fact the SSH daemon is working fine. I have configured I used to. When launch manually, I can connect to it without any problems. :D

I just want to have it automatically started on boot.

[emma_peel]

Hello.

A little UP for this thread.

I tried the reconfigure dpkg switch, without success.

Just in cas, I have installed the apache2 package. The daemon is properly launched, everything works fine for it.

I have tried a couple of priority level, including the one used by apache2 ... still no result.

This is probably something stupid that will look obvious afterwards, but I'm currently stuck ... any idea would be appreciated.

[emma_peel]

I found something that may be interesting :


arnaud@KubuntuBox:/$ grep sshd /var/log/auth.log
Jul 29 22:55:17 KubuntuBox sshd[3046]: error: Bind to port 22 on 192.168.1.101 failed: Cannot assign requested address.
Jul 29 22:55:17 KubuntuBox sshd[3046]: fatal: Cannot bind any address.
Jul 29 22:57:22 KubuntuBox sshd[3550]: Server listening on 192.168.1.101 port 22.
Jul 29 22:58:22 KubuntuBox sshd[3554]: Accepted publickey for arnaud from 192.168.1.204 port 50423 ssh2
Jul 29 22:58:23 KubuntuBox sshd[3554]: pam_unix(sshd:session): session opened for user arnaud by (uid=0)

It looks like there are errors during sshd start up. But how to correct them ?

[emma_peel]

I finally resolve the issue by commenting the listen adresse param :


arnaud@KubuntuBox:/etc/ssh$ cat sshd_config
# Quick config file
# Copied from virologie.free.fr
Port 22
Protocol 2
#ListenAddress 192.168.1.101
ServerKeyBits 1024
PermitRootLogin no

PubkeyAuthentication yes
IgnoreRhosts yes
AuthorizedKeysFile .ssh/authorized_keys
PasswordAuthentication no

UsePAM yes
Compression yes

And ... it works !

[xfile087]

I finally resolve the issue by commenting the listen adresse param :

!

Ah brilliant. I'm just getting to grips with ssh now and like you it wouldn't launch on boot but now I've found your post and disabled the listen address param it works perfectly so thanks for posting the answer, it's greatly appreaciated. :D

[VipX1]

Finally, a solution to this! Thanks for posting.
This does work.
This error caused me great irritation.

The commenting of the ListenAddress entry causes the OpenBSD sshd service to restart 3 times at boot. This can be seen on the local vga screen attached to the server.
When I try to log into sshd immediately after reboot from a client the service is unavailable and my connection attempt gets "No Route to Host" error. The after 1 minute I can connect.
If I look at the local server screen I can then see that sshd was restarting and did so 3 times.

If sshd is run in Debug mode with out the comment on the ListenAddress line the error is "cannot bind" in /var/log/messages
I think the network interface has not yet recieved it's i.p. address from the dhcp server and the sshd service cannot bind to the configured i.p. set in the ListenAddress directive in sshd_config. Without the directive it reboots until it has an address.
I tried a wild card
instead of commenting out but it was considered 'garbage'...

[orls]

Sorry to resurrect an old thread (esp. on my first post!) but I was struggling with this and wanted to add my solution for the benefit of future searchers.

To restate the problem:

SSH was not starting correctly on system startup after a pretty standard install. The ssh daemon was running (ps -ef|grep ssh), but I couldn't get in from a remote client. Once logging in on the server, issuing sudo /etc/init.d/shh restart on the box correctly restarted it, and I could access it remotely. Obviously this is no good for a headless machine, having to login at the physical box every restart.

Problem, as identified above, is that SSH wasn't binding to the ListenAddress in its config, because network has not been fully initialized/got its IP from DCHP when sshd starts up. The solution above (remove listenaddress from config) seems to work, but that might limit what you can do with SSH - as I understand it, you need ListenAddress to correctly set up remote access over public internet. (according to this (http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=13695) at least)

So if you want ListenAddress instructions in your config and also want it to start correctly at startup, you need to do the following workaround, found here (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/241796). The way this works is that every time NetworkManager changes address it will try and restart SSH. Not the pretties workaround, but it does the job.

$ su
Password:
# cd /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/
# echo /etc/init.d/ssh restart > ./10ssh
# chmod 755 ./10ssh

Hope that helps someone!

[emma_peel]

That looks a very clean solution and even far better. That may allow to launch SSH when connected to the wired network, and stop when connected by wifi.

I guess that a fixed IP should also work, but do not wanna try on my headless server.

Thank you for sharing your experience.

[Du, Wei]

Hello everyone.

I installed Ubuntu 9.10 desktop i386 for testing a few days ago.

Unfortunately, I encountered the same problem with this thread:

Unable to launch sshd automatically at the system startup.

Here is My /etc/ssh/sshd_config:

[Port 22
# Use these options to restrict which interfaces/protocols sshd will bind to
#ListenAddress ::
#ListenAddress 0.0.0.0
Protocol 2

HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key
HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key

UsePrivilegeSeparation yes

KeyRegenerationInterval 3600
ServerKeyBits 768

SyslogFacility AUTH
LogLevel INFO

LoginGraceTime 120
PermitRootLogin yes
StrictModes yes
RSAAuthentication yes
PubkeyAuthentication yes

IgnoreRhosts yes

RhostsRSAAuthentication no

HostbasedAuthentication no

PermitEmptyPasswords no

ChallengeResponseAuthentication no]

Most of the commented line has been removed except "ListenAddress" which is involved this issue directly.

This file is definitely the raw file which was installed by:

#apt-get install openssh-server

This host has a static IP address 128.224.163.52, which means static IP address doesn't work for this problem.

and obviously commenting the "ListenAddress" item doesn't work either.

Due to NIS configuration, the NetworkManager has been remove from this system, so that doesn't help too.

Following is the log information after reboot:

# grep ssh /var/log/auth.log

Jul 6 14:41:17 pek-vxhig-lx1 sshd[3657]: error: Bind to port 22 on 0.0.0.0 failed: Permission denied.
Jul 6 14:41:17 pek-vxhig-lx1 sshd[3657]: error: Bind to port 22 on :: failed: Permission denied.
Jul 6 14:41:17 pek-vxhig-lx1 sshd[3657]: fatal: Cannot bind any address.

and after restart manually, I get this:

# /etc/init.d/ssh restart

# grep ssh /var/log/auth.log

Jul 6 14:41:59 pek-vxhig-lx1 sshd[3685]: Server listening on 0.0.0.0 port 22.
Jul 6 14:41:59 pek-vxhig-lx1 sshd[3685]: Server listening on :: port 22.
Jul 6 14:58:24 pek-vxhig-lx1 sudo: target : TTY=pts/1 ; PWD=/tftpboot ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/etc/init.d/ssh restart
Jul 6 14:58:24 pek-vxhig-lx1 sshd[2857]: Server listening on 0.0.0.0 port 22.
Jul 6 14:58:24 pek-vxhig-lx1 sshd[2857]: Server listening on :: port 22.
Jul 6 15:09:38 pek-vxhig-lx1 sshd[2930]: Accepted password for root from 128.224.162.164 port 3831 ssh2

I tried almost all I can, please help.

[Pstevens]

Did you ever get a reply? I have the same situation.

[emma_peel]

Did you try the configuration file from the message #6 ?

[Walter Jnr]

I finally resolve the issue by commenting the listen adresse param :


arnaud@KubuntuBox:/etc/ssh$ cat sshd_config
# Quick config file
# Copied from virologie.free.fr
Port 22
Protocol 2
#ListenAddress 192.168.1.101
And ... it works !

I did the same the other night and it is now working perfectly. Thanks for the tip.):P

[oldos2er]

Old thread closed.