Re: Struggling to setup sshd with Windows Vista

[Brian Dessent <brian at dessent dot net>]

Kevin Hilton wrote:

> Let me just make sure I know what you are telling me to do, since I
> already did this and it didnt make a difference.  As an administrator,
> I:
> 1. Delete the sshd user -- Ok I manually edited the /etc/passwd file
> and deleted this user

No, I mean delete the *user*, not a line in a passwd file.  Windows has
a notion of user accounts, Cygwin does not; it just mirrors the Windows
database in the passwd and group file.  So deleting a user means doing
it in Windows, through the control panel, or with "net user".

On 2k3 and greater (including Vista) ssh-host-config should have created
both a sshd (for privsep) and a sshd_server user (for running the
service), so you'd want to run "net user sshd /delete" and "net user
sshd_server /delete".  You can run "net user" to see the list of Windows
user accounts.  If you don't see these user accounts it means the
ssh-host-config script wasn't able to create them, which is probably the
underlying cause.

The reason for suggesting to delete these users is that ssh-host-config
won't recreate them if they already exist, so if they exist and are
setup wrong, ssh-host-config can't help you.

> /var/log/sshd.log reveals:
> $ more sshd.log
> Privilege separation user sshd does not exist
> 
> So how do I create the sshd user? Is there anything I am missing??
> This is my first time running into problems.  Ive repeated this
> process on XP boxes like 20 times without incidence.  Its even easier
> on Ubuntu.  However getting this up and running on Vista is a fiasco.

Again, you shouldn't have to do anything other than run the
ssh-host-config script.  It is over 600 lines of logic and meant to take
care of everything required for any version of Windows.  There is no
manual fiddling needed.

I have a Vista test system.  I just ran "ssh-host-config -y" and it
worked perfectly, so I don't see what this "fiasco" you talk about is.

If you use UAC you you need to run Cygwin as an administrator when
running ssh-host-config otherwise it will be unable to do a lot of the
steps required.  You can do that simply by right clicking on the Cygwin
icon and choosing "Run as administrator".  Or disable UAC.

Brian

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