Oracle Cloud Infrasctruture - SSHD Fails to Start '/var/empty/sshd Must Be Owned By Root And Not Group Or World-Writable.' (Doc ID 2529178.1)

Last updated on DECEMBER 08, 2022

Applies to:

Symptoms

Unable to connect to the instance thru ssh.

[root@ ~]# ssh  -i <private> opc@<ip add>
ssh: connect to host server4.cr.oracle.com port 22: Connection refused

Console logs showing:

Apr 2 16:52:01 localhost systemd: sshd.service failed.
Apr 2 16:52:01 localhost systemd: Stopped OpenSSH server daemon.
Apr 2 16:52:48 localhost systemd: Starting OpenSSH server daemon...
Apr 2 16:52:48 localhost sshd: /var/empty/sshd must be owned by root and not group or world-writable.
Apr 2 16:52:48 localhost systemd: sshd.service: main process exited, code=exited, status=255/n/a
Apr 2 16:52:48 localhost systemd: Failed to start OpenSSH server daemon.
Apr 2 16:52:48 localhost systemd: Unit sshd.service entered failed state.
Apr 2 16:52:48 localhost systemd: sshd.service failed.

Changes

Permissions of home directory was too open.

Cause

My Oracle Support provides customers with access to over a million knowledge articles and a vibrant support community of peers and Oracle experts.