wrong key directory

Damien Miller
Tue, 20 May 2014 22:34:53 -0000

On Tue, 20 May 2014, Carter, James M. (MSFC-ES31) wrote:

> Sirs:

There are more than a few 'madams' on this list too.

> Trying to update OpenSSH to version openssh-6.6p1 using openssl-1.0.1g
> and zlib-1.2.3. Updating both openssl and openssh at same time. Have
> been running openssh on Solaris 8 machines for years.
>
> Has occurred on 3 mahines:
> After "compiling" openssh, try to start: /opt/openssh/sbin/sshd
>   Get error:
>     Could not load host key: /opt/openssh-5.0p1/etc/ssh_host_rsa_key
>     Could not load host key: /opt/openssh-5.0p1/etc/ssh_host_dsa_key
>     Disabling protocol version 2. Could not find host key
>     sshd: no host keys available -- exiting
>
> openssh-5.0.p1 is what I am replacing. How/where is software getting
> reference to software that I cannot find on machine? I am deleting
> installed zlib, openssl & openssh before I start new installation.

Three possibilities:

1) You are running the old sshd version instead of the new version.
   This is easily checked by running 'sshd -?' and looking at the
   version. E.g.

sshd: unknown option -- ?
OpenSSH_6.7, OpenSSL 1.0.1g 7 Apr 2014
[...]

2) You are running the correct version of sshd but it has been configured
   to use the wrong config path. You can check this by running
   'sshd -rddd' and looking for the lines like this:

debug2: load_server_config: filename /etc/ssh/sshd_config

3) You are running the correct version of sshd and it is finding the
   correct configuration file, but it has bad key paths in it. This
   will also be apparent from the debug output. E.g.

debug3: /etc/ssh/sshd_config:22 setting HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_key

Hope this helps.

-d