Incoming SSH stopped working on FreeBSD 7.2

Question

Somehow sshd stopped running and no amount of start, restart or onestart will make it go again. I normally ssh into it from a dual-boot laptop computer that shows up on the network as gabi-buntu when running Ubuntu Karmic, and as gabi-pc when running Windows XP Pro. Neither my Putty connection nor the Linux terminal can establish a ssh link anymore.

Upon rebooting the server, I am greeted with "/etc/rc: WARNING: run_rc_command: cannot run /usr/sbin/sshd". In addition, a message will appear saying things like

rpc.statd: failed to contact host gabi-buntu RPC: port mapper failure RPC: timed out

Everything else works fine. The FreeBSD 7.2 box runs a print server, a Samba server, and an Apache server for a wiki via https. It also serves up NFS shares for Linux clients.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Geoff and Marie, I didn't get that far. I'm new here. I kept an eye on this question but it kept showing no answers, so I never actually looked at it -- which would have alerted me to your comments. I found a workaround.

First, my diagnostic:

Turns out the NFS server does care whether its clients are present. I didn't know. I assumed it just served whoever was there, looking to be served.

The "gabi-buntu" client was the Ubuntu Karmic half of a dual-boot laptop. Karmic does not suspend/hibernate on a laptop -- or at best it does, but it can't wake up, which is the same thing because it takes a cold restart. That event registers with the NFS server's rpc.statd daemon as a client crash. That's what caused the port mapper failure -- see the BUGS section of rpc.statd(8) in the FreeBSD man pages.

My workaround:

I don't really need an NFS server. Until Ubuntu figures out how to suspend/hibernate on laptops, I'll stick with Win XP and access my server share via Samba. That works fine.

So, all I had to do was fix ssh. The /usr/sbin/sshd file was there alright. I'm not sure why it didn't work, but it doesn't matter: "make -D WITH_OVERWRITE_BASE deinstall reinstall clean" of the "openssh-portable" port cured whatever ailed it and it works now.