sshd error in syslog

[Aaron Sheard]

hello all,

i noticed that the following message is filling up my syslogs and i want to clean it up.

ssh seems to work fine, i have it configured in inetd. this is the line: (launched by tcp wrappers)

ssh stream tcp nowait root /usr/lbin/tcpd /opt/ssh/sbin/sshd -i

but i keep getting this message in syslog:

Jan 29 08:47:57 xnnm000 inetd[650]: ssh/tcp: bind: Address already in use
Jan 29 08:47:57 xnnm000 inetd[650]: ssh/tcp: Service enabled
Jan 29 08:57:57 xnnm000 inetd[650]: ssh/tcp: bind: Address already in use
Jan 29 08:57:57 xnnm000 inetd[650]: ssh/tcp: Service enabled
Jan 29 09:07:57 xnnm000 inetd[650]: ssh/tcp: bind: Address already in use
Jan 29 09:07:57 xnnm000 inetd[650]: ssh/tcp: Service enabled

any ideas?

thanks in advance...

Aaron

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Hi Aaron,

Do you have a standalone sshd running already by any chance?. That's the only case that I can think of if you are getting "Address already in use" errors.

Or try running it straight from inetd instead through tcp_wrappers.

If your idea is to run sshd with tcp_wrappers, you don't need to put it in inetd.conf. If sshd is compiled with tcp_wrappers option, then a standalone sshd can read hosts.allow and hosts.deny without any help from tcpd.

And it is recommended to run sshd in standalone mode.

-Sri

[Aaron Sheard]

thanks for the reply. i thought about the standalone but that is not the case. i think i will try to unwrap sshd and see if it still reads my hosts.* files

why is it recommended to run stand alone rather than inetd?

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

The reason why people tend not to run through inetd is because everytime sshd is spawned, it has to generate keys which may delay the connection. Below is the excerpt from inetd man page.

//start


-i Specifies that sshd is being run from inetd. sshd is normally
not run from inetd because it needs to generate the server key
before it can respond to the client, and this may take tens of
seconds. Clients would have to wait too long if the key was
regenerated every time. However, with small key sizes (e.g.,
512) using sshd from inetd may be feasible.

//End

-Sri

[Aaron Sheard]

ok thanks i read that a while ago. i guess i didnt notice the slowness because its a fast machine (n class 4 cpu)

maybe i will change it.

P.S. i tried adding the -q switch to sshd and it still logs.