sshd process inoperative

Question

I have an AIX server which suddenly stopped servicing SSH connections. When I try to start the service through startsrc -s sshd it says:

0513-059 The sshd Subsystem has been started. Subsystem PID is 258300.

However, right after issuing the command, the services status shows up as inoperative:

 sshd             ssh                           inoperative

The init scripts are well located and throw the same result as above.

EDIT: Here's the odmget command output:

SRCsubsys:
    subsysname = "sshd"
    synonym = ""
    cmdargs = "-D"
    path = "/usr/sbin/sshd"
    uid = 0
    auditid = 0
    standin = "/dev/console"
    standout = "/dev/console"
    standerr = "/dev/console"
    action = 1
    multi = 0
    contact = 2
    svrkey = 0
    svrmtype = 0
    priority = 20
    signorm = 15
    sigforce = 9
    display = 1
    waittime = 20
    grpname = "ssh"

When trying to start the service manually, the following error appears:

exec(): 0509-036 Cannot load program /usr/sbin/sshd because of the following errors:
0509-150   Dependent module libz.a(libz.so.1) could not be loaded.
0509-022 Cannot load module libz.a(libz.so.1).
0509-026 System error: A file or directory in the path name does not exist.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You can try the following:

1) enable LogLevel DEBUG3 in /etc/ssh/sshd_config

2) add string security.debug /var/log/syslog.security.debug rotate time 1d files 4 to /etc/syslog.conf

3) then

# touch /var/log/syslog.security.debug
# stopsrc -s syslogd
# startsrc -s syslogd
# stopsrc -s sshd
# startsrc -s sshd

Answer 2

Looks like libz.so.1 is missing on your system.

Answer 3

The problem is that there is no libz.a in /etc/opt/freeware/lib.

Use the command and find libz:

find / -name 'libz*' -exec ls -l {} \;  2>/dev/null

After, copy the library to /opt/freeware/lib/. Example:

cp /opt/freeware/lib/saveoldrpm/oldrpm/lib/libz.a /opt/freeware/lib
startsrc -s sshd