Regarding increasing MaxStartups value for ssh connections

[Kavita Poonia]

Hello All,

Does increasing MaxStartups value to 100 on a server for SSH connections whose default value remains 10 can cause any impact.

What points need to be considered while setting this value ?

Thanks & regards,
Kavita

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

Hi Kavita:

The 'MaxStartups' parameter specifies the maximuym number of concurrent, unauthenticated connections that the 'sshd' daemon will accept. Further connections will be dropped until either authentication succeeds or the 'LoginGraceTime' for a connection expires.

This allows you to limit password guessing attacks. I don't believe that the overhead for the 'sshd' daemon would be that great, but the question remains as to why you want to increase this value. Are there many, many users who simultaneously attempt to connect and are being denied?

Regards!

...JRF...

[Kavita Poonia]

Thanks James. It is because of an application requirement that starts upto 50 daemons simultaneously which in turn connects to server through ssh.