Unable to SSH to Aria Orchestrator Cluster Nodes After Cumulative Update - Patch 1

Products

• VMware Aria Suite

Issue/Introduction

Unable to SSH to any of the Aria Orchestrator cluster nodes. The issue persists even when connecting from the same L2 network. The SSHD service fails to start, returning the error "Failed to start OpenSSH server daemon."

Environment

Aria Automation / Orchestrator 8.18.1 Cumulative Update - Patch 1

Cause

The issue was traced back to the journal log (via journalctl -u sshd.service), where an error related to {key_dir} was found, stating "Unable to load host key." The SSHD service failed to start because the daemon had no host keys available for use.

Resolution

• Take a backup of the sshd_config_effective file located at /etc/ssh/ from the console:
  cp sshd_config_effective sshd_config_effective_bak
• Edit the sshd_config_effective file and locate the 'HostKey' entries.
• Update all the 'HostKey' entries from //${key_dir}/ to /etc/ssh/keys/v2.
  
  From:
  

TO:

• Save the file and reboot the node.
• Check the SSHD service status with service sshd status; it should now be up and running.

Additionally. if adding the required ssh algorithms do not resolve the issue, compare the contents of the sshd_config_effective file with that of the sshd_config_desired and the below may be followed:

• Backup the existing contents of  /etc/ssh/sshd_config_effective file 
  cp  /etc/ssh/sshd_config_effective  /etc/ssh/sshd_config_effective_old 
• Validate that the sshd_config_desired file has all the required contents. 
• Copy the contents of the sshd_config_desired from into the /etc/ssh/sshd_config_effective file
  cp  /etc/ssh/sshd_config_desired  /etc/ssh/sshd_config_effective
• restart the sshd service adn validate that it is running successfully. 
  systemctl restart sshd.service
• Attempt to access the node via ssh now.

 

Additional Information

This issue with the HostKey formatting change was introduced following the Cumulative Update - Patch 1, KB Article 385294