Ubuntu – sshd won’t stop/start properly

13.10sshsshd

I am running ubuntu 13.10 (fresh install). I have installed openssh-server. During the process of trying to troubleshoot a problem with logging in via ssh from another linux system (also running ubuntu) I discovered that stopping and starting the server don't seem to work properly. I have googled the problem extensively and found many (sometimes conflicting) answers. Below are the results for the four methods I have found

root@newton:~# invoke-rc.d ssh stop
initctl: Unknown job: ssh
root@newton:~# service ssh stop
stop: Unknown job: ssh
root@newton:~# /etc/init.d/ssh stop
root@newton:~# 
root@newton:~# stop ssh
stop: Unknown job: ssh

In no case do I get feedback that indicates the daemon stopped. The same goes for trying to start the daemon. When I look at /var/log/auth.log I see that the daemon apparently stopped multiple times but not because of the above commands. It only stops when I kill it using killall sshd. After which it immediately restarts. Somehow something appears to be completely broken with my system. Does anyone have any ideas on how to sort it out? Thanks for any help.

Best Answer

Thanks to all who have posted trying to help me sort this out. I wanted to update all on the current status and explain what I did to put the system in its current state. You will notice in the original post that I tried sudo service ssh start, etc. and obtained various unhelpful errors. Eventually, I did 

#touch /etc/ssh/sshd_not_to_be_run

and then 

# killall sshd

a few times. At this point sshd stopped restarting (as you would expect). I then ran

sudo service ssh status
ssh stop/waiting  

sudo service ssh start  
ssh stop/pre-start, process 22510  

sudo service ssh status  
ssh stop/waiting  

sudo service ssh stop  
stop: Unknown instance:   

sudo service ssh status  
ssh stop/waiting  

sudo service ssh start    
ssh stop/pre-start, process 22579    

sudo service ssh status    
ssh stop/waiting

These results are expected given the presence of sshd_not_to_be_run file. After subsequently removing this file I was able to run:

sudo service ssh status
ssh stop/waiting

sudo service ssh start
ssh start/running, process 25063

sudo service ssh status
ssh start/running, process 25063

sudo service ssh stop
ssh stop/waiting

sudo service ssh start
ssh start/running, process 25141

sudo service ssh status
ssh start/running, process 25141

sudo service ssh stop
ssh stop/waiting

sudo service ssh start
ssh start/running, process 25247

It looks like things are in order for now. If anyone has any ideas about tests that I could to to help ubuntu sort this out (I have seen several other posts on the web that indicate the errors I was originally getting) I would be happy to do them and post results. Thanks again for all of your help.

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