Mac Forum / General / Networking / November 2004

Hi all,

I've recently experienced an unusual problem with ssh (openssh) on both
of my OS X machines (G4 iMac and G4 PowerBook).  I recently applied an
Apple Security Update and also an upgrade to openssh by way of fink.  
The problem occurs whether I use the fink version or the Apple supplied
version, so my best guess is that Apple may have changed some config
files (used by both) that may affect my particular setup.

Anyway, what happens is that when I try to initiate an ssh connection
between my machines, or even from one machine to itself, I get the
following message (for example):

% ssh localhost
ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host

If I examine /var/log/system.log, I see the following entries:

Nov 26 11:45:34 iMac xinetd[305]: START: ssh pid=24267 from=::1
Nov 26 11:45:34 iMac sshd[24267]: fatal: Missing privilege separation
directory:
/var/empty

OK, that looks suggestive.  So, I issue this command:

% sudo mkdir /var/empty

After this, I can use ssh, but I don't know if this is the best
solution, or if the correct permissions are set for /var/empty.  In
addition, now I get the following sorts of messages in the system.log
when I log out:

Nov 26 11:51:05 iMac sshd[28308]: error: BSM audit: solaris_audit_record
failed
to write "sshd logout " record: Operation not supported

So, any thoughts why this happened (to both of my Macs), whether this is
the best solution, if there are any additional problems, anything else I
should do, etc?

Thanks,
Mike