sshd failed

[plake]

Attempting to restart sshd
Waiting for sshd to restart.... . . . . . . . . . . finished.

sshd status root 32571 1.1 2.2 12812 11500 ? S 19:47

0:00 /usr/local/cpanel/whostmgr/bin/whostmgr ./ressshd
Dec 13 19:47:07 xxxx sshd: sshd shutdown failed Dec 13 19:47:07 xxxx sshd: succeeded sshd has failed, please contact the sysadmin.

Any ideas on fixing this, other than having them login to the box from inside the data center? I found this thread http://forums.cpanel.net/showthread....ht=sshd+failed is that they only way?

[plake]

Well I took a chance and did a reboot, but now both WHM/cPanel are not running...

[plake]

ok, so this is a dialogue now of me fixing my server...

anyways I got cpanel/whm up and running again... talk about a freakout... thank goodness luck was on my side tonight...

whew

[dezignguy]

so what happened? ;-D

[DigitalN]

As long as you can access whm, you can usually fix ssh (say in the event of a config error) by force installing the rpms using the rpm install manager within whm.

If that doesn't work, (say bad sshd config that wouldn't be removed, as it had been modified) then I have before today added the user 'nobody' to the wheel group within whm, created an expect script (executed with phpsell) to spawn a shell, su to root (nobody being added to wheel group , delete the bad config files and download and force install the ssh rpms again, restart sshd.

Make sure you have the scripts ready before adding 'nobody' to the wheel group, if you do this anytime and make sure to immediately remove from the wheel group afterwards

Just thought I'd share.

[plake]

I appricate the replies, I did not think of the option of forcing a shell instance, or reinstalling the rpm.

I was messing with the sshd config and uncommented the wrong section which caused sshd to fail. The reboot corrected the sshd service, but I had to wait about 30 minutes till it finally came up. After which I logged back in, recommented the comments :P and then restarted the service, bam... restarted the box again and everything is back to normal.

That was an interesting point, due to the fact that when sshd failed and I restarted, WHM/cPanel services did not restart either. So of course I was freaking a bit because my datacenter charges $150/hr to correct problems from the console at the box.

Anywho, what I was exactly doing was changing the config status to a different ip and different port #. None the less, it goes back to the stupid check and double check thing, human error, careless, but human...

[Etheral]

Haha... Changing the port and the listen IP is a great way to help secure your SSH from intrusion :-). But if you do, do that, you HAVE to remember your port... or your screwed for a long time lol. Also you have to open the port on any firewalls you might have installed. Glade you got this resolved though :-)

[plake]

I opened the ports for both inbound/outbound, tcp/udp just to be on the safe side, not really sure why it fubared like this, but its been corrected.

still was a nightmare, thinking I might have to pay some idiot to login to my box manually and correct it... ahhhh

[dezignguy]

heh, I have webmin installed... to give me an easy alternate access to my server... it has a java file manager, and a java telnet/ssh applet... so if ssh goes down (or it's blocked by the firewall or something), I can get in and fix it. I've only had to use it once when sshd died after an rpm update... but it saved my bacon then. And then because I lock down access to the ssh port to only my ip, I have to be able to get in and update the hosts.allow with my new ip when I go somewhere else. So that's what I mainly use it for now.

[elderban]

I would like to add the suggestion that WHM add a file manager in a future version.

[xWho]

WHM needs to add the Java file manager and SSH client that Webmin has. Really. It should be must.

[LordJMann]

WHM needs to add the Java file manager and SSH client that Webmin has. Really. It should be must.

I second this, if SSH is down, you are screwed for trying to edit config files or execute commands.

[chirpy]

Well, you can put in a request to cPanel - for those that cannot wait, there is one available now, of course