openssh.README is wrong. It says:
This package describes important Cygwin specific stuff concerning OpenSSH. The binary package is usually built for recent Cygwin versions and might not run on older versions. Please check http://cygwin.com/ for information about current Cygwin releases. Build instructions are at the end of the file. =========================================================================== Important change since 3.7.1p2-2: The ssh-host-config file doesn't create the /etc/ssh_config and /etc/sshd_config files from builtin here-scripts anymore, but it uses skeleton files installed in /etc/defaults/etc. Also it now tries hard to create appropriate permissions on files. Same applies for ssh-user-config. After creating the sshd service with ssh-host-config, it's advisable to call ssh-user-config for all affected users, also already exising user configurations. In the latter case, file and directory permissions are checked and changed, if requireed to match the host configuration. Important note for Windows 2003 Server users: --------------------------------------------- 2003 Server has a funny new feature. When starting services under SYSTEM account, these services have nearly all user rights which SYSTEM holds... except for the "Create a token object" right, which is needed to allow public key authentication :-( There's no way around this, except for creating a substitute account which has the appropriate privileges. Basically, this account should be member of the administrators group, plus it should have the following user rights: Create a token object Logon as a service Replace a process level token Increase Quota The ssh-host-config script asks you, if it should create such an account, called "sshd_server". If you say "no" here, you're on your own. Please follow the instruction in ssh-host-config exactly if possible. Note that ssh-user-config sets the permissions on 2003 Server machines dependent of whether a sshd_server account exists or not. =========================================================================== =========================================================================== Important change since 3.4p1-2: This version adds privilege separation as default setting, see /usr/doc/openssh/README.privsep. According to that document the privsep feature requires a non-privileged account called 'sshd'. The new ssh-host-config file which is part of this version asks to create 'sshd' as local user if you want to use privilege separation. If you confirm, it creates that NT user and adds the necessary entry to /etc/passwd. On 9x/Me systems the script just sets UsePrivilegeSeparation to "no" since that feature doesn't make any sense on a system which doesn't differ between privileged and unprivileged users. The new ssh-host-config script also adds the /var/empty directory needed by privilege separation. When creating the /var/empty directory by yourself, please note that in contrast to the README.privsep document the owner sshould not be "root" but the user which is running sshd. So, in the standard configuration this is SYSTEM. The ssh-host-config script chowns /var/empty accordingly. =========================================================================== But when I "chown sshd /var/empty ; chmod 700 /var/empty", I still get the error message: pjb@lassell ~ $ /usr/sbin/sshd /var/empty must be owned by root and not group or world-writable. pjb@lassell ~ $ ls -ld /var/empty drwx------+ 1 sshd root 0 Mar 29 05:51 /var/empty pjb@lassell ~ $ uname -a CYGWIN_NT-6.1-WOW64 lassell 1.7.8(0.236/5/3) 2011-03-01 09:36 i686 Cygwin Installed on a Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit system. I've tried to change the owner of /var/empty to various other account without success. What should I do? -- __Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/ A bad day in () is better than a good day in {}. -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple