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I'm not able to ssh to localhost on my Mac. I found that sshd is not running in the machine (no process is running on port 22).

lsof -i:22

I found some posts asking to enable Remote Login in System Preferences -> Sharing. Eventhough it is enabled, I'm not able to ssh to localhost. The error I'm getting is this

$ssh -v localhost
OpenSSH_7.6p1, LibreSSL 2.6.2
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config
debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 48: Applying options for *
debug1: Connecting to localhost port 22.
debug1: Connection established.
debug1: identity file /Users/gkumar6/.ssh/id_rsa type 0
debug1: key_load_public: No such file or directory
debug1: identity file /Users/gkumar6/.ssh/id_rsa-cert type -1
debug1: key_load_public: No such file or directory
debug1: identity file /Users/gkumar6/.ssh/id_dsa type -1
debug1: key_load_public: No such file or directory
debug1: identity file /Users/gkumar6/.ssh/id_dsa-cert type -1
debug1: key_load_public: No such file or directory
debug1: identity file /Users/gkumar6/.ssh/id_ecdsa type -1
debug1: key_load_public: No such file or directory
debug1: identity file /Users/gkumar6/.ssh/id_ecdsa-cert type -1
debug1: key_load_public: No such file or directory
debug1: identity file /Users/gkumar6/.ssh/id_ed25519 type -1
debug1: key_load_public: No such file or directory
debug1: identity file /Users/gkumar6/.ssh/id_ed25519-cert type -1
debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_7.6
ssh_exchange_identification: read: Connection reset by peer

Is there anything I'm missing here?

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5
  • It seems like your client is trying to load a bunch of keys and then failing. What does your ~/.ssh/config look like? You can either create a key (ssh-keygen) and put it in your ~/.ssh/authorized_keys or you can tweak your config to allow password login.
    – Bailey Parker
    Commented Aug 10, 2018 at 19:50
  • There is no ~/.ssh/config file in my system. How can I use it allow password login?
    – pkgajulapalli
    Commented Aug 11, 2018 at 1:03
  • If you have solved the problem, please post the solution as an answer instead of editing the question.
    – muru
    Commented Aug 13, 2018 at 2:59
  • 1
    Added the solution as answer.
    – pkgajulapalli
    Commented Aug 13, 2018 at 3:03
  • To explain why you're not seeing sshd running on the Mac (server) side. On Mac OS-X sshd is not running standalone (i.e. as a long-lived independent service). Instead it is started on-demand by launchd when the 'Sharing' -> 'Remote Login' service is enabled, and an incoming connection is made from a client to the sshd port.
    – arielf
    Commented Apr 30, 2020 at 20:35

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
4

I've found the solution for this

I tried to run the sshd process manually listening to a different port to debug the issue.

sudo /usr/sbin/sshd -d -p 2222

It showed the actual problem.

debug1: sshd version OpenSSH_7.6, LibreSSL 2.6.2
debug1: private host key #0: ssh-rsa SHA256:oECJtUeeA3sNrAQj3phBiuWJoVl00dzLiXi20tlWF/o
debug1: private host key #1: ssh-dss SHA256:uVnKrOK+4V+y3QalyFdqDz+9eBN4oi2E3wb1MDBcgzc
debug1: private host key #2: ecdsa-sha2-nistp256 SHA256:CWapRrGUSJx2doJkDf2YR/aZy4BJ4j9K1/ZwX4eUZcg
debug1: private host key #3: ssh-ed25519 SHA256:sjzAks0Hud+Ah941pd8ZRNO6MWENdhO8wW4NMNDL2Ns
/var/empty must be owned by root and not group or world-writable.

The permissions to the directory /var/empty were

drwxr-xr-x   7 gkumar6       sys            224B Aug 12 21:02 empty

So I've changed it to sudo chown root:wheel /var/empty

drwxr-xr-x   7 root          wheel          224B Aug 12 21:02 empty

This has solved the problem for me.

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3

The log you are posting is showing that the secure shell daemon is running:

debug1: Connection established.

You would not see that line were it not; would instead see a more succinct log ending with Connection refused.

You are not seeing any output from lsof most likely because you are not running the command with sufficient privileges:

$ lsof -i:22
$ echo $?
1
$ sudo lsof -i:22
sudo lsof -i:22
Password:
COMMAND PID USER   FD   TYPE             DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
launchd   1 root   12u  IPv6 0x2feb0cecf91e551b      0t0  TCP *:ssh (LISTEN)
launchd   1 root   16u  IPv4 0x2feb0cecf91ec3a3      0t0  TCP *:ssh (LISTEN)
launchd   1 root   22u  IPv6 0x2feb0cecf91e551b      0t0  TCP *:ssh (LISTEN)
launchd   1 root   23u  IPv4 0x2feb0cecf91ec3a3      0t0  TCP *:ssh (LISTEN)

The echo statement preceding the second attempt is showing that the previous command returned an exit code of 1, indicating an error state.

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  • You are correct. The sshd process is running. But do you know why I'm not able to connect to localhost via ssh?
    – pkgajulapalli
    Commented Aug 10, 2018 at 19:14
1

Have you loaded sshd?

launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist
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1
  • Yes, but still not able to ssh to localhost
    – pkgajulapalli
    Commented Aug 11, 2018 at 1:04

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