Unable to SSH into node for Aria Orchestrator with Error : "Access Denied : Incorrect password"

Products

• VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)

Issue/Introduction

• The Aria Orchestrator node is not accessible by SSH. Fails with  Error : "Access Denied : Incorrect password"
• The same password is in use for control center and it is accessible successfully.
• The journalctl -u sshd.service, showed errors related to {key_dir}, stating "Unable to load host key."
• The SSHD service failed to start because the daemon had no host keys available for use.

Environment

• VMware Aria Automation 8.x
• VMware Aria Orchestrator 8.x

Cause

• This is caused by the corrupted sshd_config_effective file 

Resolution

To resolve the issue, restore the sshd configurations from the sshd_config_desired file. 

• 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. 
  
  • Key content validations for SSH with root user:
    
    • PermitRootLogin yes → Enables direct root login.
    • PasswordAuthentication yes → Allows password-based logins.
    • ListenAddress 0.0.0.0/:: → Ensures SSH is accessible from all regions / networks (Depends on reachability required).
• 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
  sudo systemctl restart sshd.service
• If the sshd.service is running healthily, skip this step. If the sshd.service still complains with errors related to {key_dir}, stating "Unable to load host key." Follow the below procedure to recreate the hostKeys
  • Identify the host keys sshd expects:
    grep ^HostKey /etc/ssh/sshd_config_effective
  • Check if those files exist
    ls -l /etc/ssh/ssh_host_*
  • Generate missing host keys:
    sudo ssh-keygen -A
    Note: This regenerates all missing host keys (RSA, ECDSA, Ed25519).
  • Fix file ownership and permissions as the private keys must be owned by root:root and 600:
    sudo chown root:root /etc/ssh/ssh_host_*
sudo chmod 600 /etc/ssh/ssh_host_*_key
    Public keys (*.pub) can be 644.
  • Restart sshd.service
    sudo systemctl restart sshd.service
sudo systemctl status sshd.service
• Attempt to access the node via ssh now.