SSHD_CONFIG(5) BSD Reference Manual SSHD_CONFIG(5)
sshd_config - OpenSSH SSH daemon configuration file
/etc/ssh/sshd_config
sshd(8) reads configuration data from /etc/ssh/sshd_config (or the file
specified with -f on the command line). The file contains keyword-
argument pairs, one per line. Lines starting with '#' and empty lines are
interpreted as comments. Arguments may optionally be enclosed in double
quotes (") in order to represent arguments containing spaces.
The possible keywords and their meanings are as follows (note that key-
words are case-insensitive and arguments are case-sensitive):
AcceptEnv
Specifies what environment variables sent by the client will be
copied into the session's environ(7). See SendEnv in
ssh_config(5) for how to configure the client. Note that environ-
ment passing is only supported for protocol 2. Variables are
specified by name, which may contain the wildcard characters '*'
and '?'. Multiple environment variables may be separated by whi-
tespace or spread across multiple AcceptEnv directives. Be warned
that some environment variables could be used to bypass restrict-
ed user environments. For this reason, care should be taken in
the use of this directive. The default is not to accept any en-
vironment variables.
AddressFamily
Specifies which address family should be used by sshd(8). Valid
arguments are "any", "inet" (use IPv4 only), or "inet6" (use IPv6
only). The default is "any".
AllowAgentForwarding
Specifies whether ssh-agent(1) forwarding is permitted. The de-
fault is "yes". Note that disabling agent forwarding does not im-
prove security unless users are also denied shell access, as they
can always install their own forwarders.
AllowGroups
This keyword can be followed by a list of group name patterns,
separated by spaces. If specified, login is allowed only for
users whose primary group or supplementary group list matches one
of the patterns. Only group names are valid; a numerical group ID
is not recognized. By default, login is allowed for all groups.
The allow/deny directives are processed in the following order:
DenyUsers, AllowUsers, DenyGroups, and finally AllowGroups.
See PATTERNS in ssh_config(5) for more information on patterns.
AllowTcpForwarding
Specifies whether TCP forwarding is permitted. The default is
"yes". Note that disabling TCP forwarding does not improve secu-
rity unless users are also denied shell access, as they can al-
ways install their own forwarders.
AllowUsers
This keyword can be followed by a list of user name patterns,
separated by spaces. If specified, login is allowed only for user
names that match one of the patterns. Only user names are valid;
a numerical user ID is not recognized. By default, login is al-
lowed for all users. If the pattern takes the form USER@HOST then
USER and HOST are separately checked, restricting logins to par-
ticular users from particular hosts. The allow/deny directives
are processed in the following order: DenyUsers, AllowUsers,
DenyGroups, and finally AllowGroups.
See PATTERNS in ssh_config(5) for more information on patterns.
AuthorisedKeysFile
Specifies the file that contains the public keys that can be used
for user authentication. AuthorisedKeysFile may contain tokens of
the form %T which are substituted during connection setup. The
following tokens are defined: %% is replaced by a literal '%', %h
is replaced by the home directory of the user being authenticat-
ed, and %u is replaced by the username of that user. After expan-
sion, AuthorisedKeysFile is taken to be an absolute path or one
relative to the user's home directory. The default is
".etc/ssh/authorised_keys".
AuthorisedKeysFile2
Only used for backward compatibility with stock OpenBSD OpenSSH.
This option is deprecated. The default is ".ssh/authorized_keys"
if AuthorisedKeysFile if unset, its value otherwise.
Banner The contents of the specified file are sent to the remote user
before authentication is allowed. If the argument is "none" then
no banner is displayed. This option is only available for proto-
col version 2. By default, no banner is displayed.
ChallengeResponseAuthentication
Specifies whether challenge-response authentication is allowed.
All authentication styles from login.conf(5) are supported. The
default is "yes".
ChrootDirectory
Specifies a path to chroot(2) to after authentication. This path,
and all its components, must be root-owned directories that are
not writable by any other user or group. After the chroot,
sshd(8) changes the working directory to the user's home directo-
ry.
The path may contain the following tokens that are expanded at
runtime once the connecting user has been authenticated: %% is
replaced by a literal '%', %h is replaced by the home directory
of the user being authenticated, and %u is replaced by the user-
name of that user.
The ChrootDirectory must contain the necessary files and direc-
tories to support the user's session. For an interactive session
this requires at least a shell, typically sh(1), and basic /dev
nodes such as null(4), zero(4), stdin(4), stdout(4), stderr(4),
arandom(4) and tty(4) devices. For file transfer sessions using
"sftp", no additional configuration of the environment is neces-
sary if the in-process sftp server is used, though sessions which
use logging do require /dev/log inside the chroot directory (see
sftp-server(8) for details).
The default is not to chroot(2).
Ciphers
Specifies the ciphers allowed for protocol version 2. Multiple
ciphers must be comma-separated. The supported ciphers are "3des-
cbc", "aes128-cbc", "aes192-cbc", "aes256-cbc", "aes128-ctr",
"aes192-ctr", "aes256-ctr", "arcfour128", "arcfour256",
"arcfour", "blowfish-cbc", and "cast128-cbc". The default is:
aes256-ctr,arcfour256,aes256-cbc,cast128-cbc,aes128-cbc,
blowfish-cbc,rijndael-cbc@lysator.liu.se,aes128-ctr,
arcfour128,arcfour,aes192-cbc,aes192-ctr,3des-cbc
ClientAliveCountMax
Sets the number of client alive messages (see below) which may be
sent without sshd(8) receiving any messages back from the client.
If this threshold is reached while client alive messages are be-
ing sent, sshd will disconnect the client, terminating the ses-
sion. It is important to note that the use of client alive mes-
sages is very different from TCPKeepAlive (below). The client
alive messages are sent through the encrypted channel and there-
fore will not be spoofable. The TCP keepalive option enabled by
TCPKeepAlive is spoofable. The client alive mechanism is valuable
when the client or server depend on knowing when a connection has
become inactive.
The default value is 3. If ClientAliveInterval (see below) is set
to 15, and ClientAliveCountMax is left at the default, unrespon-
sive SSH clients will be disconnected after approximately 45
seconds. This option applies to protocol version 2 only.
ClientAliveInterval
Sets a timeout interval in seconds after which if no data has
been received from the client, sshd(8) will send a message
through the encrypted channel to request a response from the
client. The default is 0, indicating that these messages will not
be sent to the client. This option applies to protocol version 2
only.
Compression
Specifies whether compression is allowed, or delayed until the
user has authenticated successfully. The argument must be "yes",
"delayed", or "no". The default is "delayed".
DenyGroups
This keyword can be followed by a list of group name patterns,
separated by spaces. Login is disallowed for users whose primary
group or supplementary group list matches one of the patterns.
Only group names are valid; a numerical group ID is not recog-
nized. By default, login is allowed for all groups. The
allow/deny directives are processed in the following order:
DenyUsers, AllowUsers, DenyGroups, and finally AllowGroups.
See PATTERNS in ssh_config(5) for more information on patterns.
DenyUsers
This keyword can be followed by a list of user name patterns,
separated by spaces. Login is disallowed for user names that
match one of the patterns. Only user names are valid; a numerical
user ID is not recognized. By default, login is allowed for all
users. If the pattern takes the form USER@HOST then USER and HOST
are separately checked, restricting logins to particular users
from particular hosts. The allow/deny directives are processed in
the following order: DenyUsers, AllowUsers, DenyGroups, and fi-
nally AllowGroups.
See PATTERNS in ssh_config(5) for more information on patterns.
ForceCommand
Forces the execution of the command specified by ForceCommand,
ignoring any command supplied by the client and ~/.etc/ssh/rc if
present. The command is invoked by using the user's login shell
with the -c option. This applies to shell, command, or subsystem
execution. It is most useful inside a Match block. The command
originally supplied by the client is available in the
SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND environment variable. Specifying a command
of "internal-sftp" will force the use of an in-process sftp
server that requires no support files when used with
ChrootDirectory.
GatewayPorts
Specifies whether remote hosts are allowed to connect to ports
forwarded for the client. By default, sshd(8) binds remote port
forwardings to the loopback address. This prevents other remote
hosts from connecting to forwarded ports. GatewayPorts can be
used to specify that sshd should allow remote port forwardings to
bind to non-loopback addresses, thus allowing other hosts to con-
nect. The argument may be "no" to force remote port forwardings
to be available to the local host only, "yes" to force remote
port forwardings to bind to the wildcard address, or
"clientspecified" to allow the client to select the address to
which the forwarding is bound. The default is "no".
HostbasedAuthentication
Specifies whether rhosts or /etc/hosts.equiv authentication to-
gether with successful public key client host authentication is
allowed (host-based authentication). This option is similar to
RhostsRSAAuthentication and applies to protocol version 2 only.
The default is "no".
HostbasedUsesNameFromPacketOnly
Specifies whether or not the server will attempt to perform a re-
verse name lookup when matching the name in the ~/.shosts,
~/.rhosts, and /etc/hosts.equiv files during
HostbasedAuthentication. A setting of "yes" means that sshd(8)
uses the name supplied by the client rather than attempting to
resolve the name from the TCP connection itself. The default is
"no".
HostKey
Specifies a file containing a private host key used by SSH. The
default (if they are all commented out) is /etc/ssh/ssh_host_key
for protocol version 1, and /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key and
/etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key for protocol version 2. Starting with
MirBSD #8, the shipped version only checks for the RSAv2 key.
Note that sshd(8) will refuse to use a file if it is group/world-
accessible. It is possible to have multiple host key files.
"rsa1" keys are used for version 1 and "dsa" or "rsa" are used
for version 2 of the SSH protocol.
IgnoreRhosts
Specifies that .rhosts and .shosts files will not be used in
RhostsRSAAuthentication or HostbasedAuthentication.
/etc/hosts.equiv and /etc/shosts.equiv are still used. The de-
fault is "yes".
IgnoreUserKnownHosts
Specifies whether sshd(8) should ignore the user's
~/.etc/ssh/known_hosts during RhostsRSAAuthentication or
HostbasedAuthentication. The default is "no".
KeyRegenerationInterval
In protocol version 1, the ephemeral server key is automatically
regenerated after this many seconds (if it has been used). The
purpose of regeneration is to prevent decrypting captured ses-
sions by later breaking into the machine and stealing the keys.
The key is never stored anywhere. If the value is 0, the key is
never regenerated. The default is 3600 (seconds).
ListenAddress
Specifies the local addresses sshd(8) should listen on. The fol-
lowing forms may be used:
ListenAddress host|IPv4_addr|IPv6_addr
ListenAddress host|IPv4_addr:port
ListenAddress [host|IPv6_addr]:port
If port is not specified, sshd will listen on the address and all
prior Port options specified. The default is to listen on all lo-
cal addresses. Multiple ListenAddress options are permitted. Ad-
ditionally, any Port options must precede this option for non-
port qualified addresses.
LoginGraceTime
The server disconnects after this time if the user has not suc-
cessfully logged in. If the value is 0, there is no time limit.
The default is 120 seconds.
LogLevel
Gives the verbosity level that is used when logging messages from
sshd(8). The possible values are: QUIET, FATAL, ERROR, INFO, VER-
BOSE, DEBUG, DEBUG1, DEBUG2, and DEBUG3. The default is INFO. DE-
BUG and DEBUG1 are equivalent. DEBUG2 and DEBUG3 each specify
higher levels of debugging output. Logging with a DEBUG level
violates the privacy of users and is not recommended.
MACs Specifies the available MAC (message authentication code) algo-
rithms. The MAC algorithm is used in protocol version 2 for data
integrity protection. Multiple algorithms must be comma-
separated. The default is:
umac-64@openssh.com,hmac-ripemd160,hmac-ripemd160@openssh.com,
hmac-sha1,hmac-sha1-96,hmac-md5,hmac-md5-96
MaskRemoteAddress
Hides the remote IP address and port from logging messages. This
may help some with EU-DSGVO compliance. If used in a Match block,
masking is only applied for successful logins. If a non-default
debugging level is used, remote identity may be disclosed because
masking is then activated too late.
Match Introduces a conditional block. If all of the criteria on the
Match line are satisfied, the keywords on the following lines
override those set in the global section of the config file, un-
til either another Match line or the end of the file.
The arguments to Match are one or more criteria-pattern pairs.
The available criteria are User, Group, Host, and Address. The
match patterns may consist of single entries or comma-separated
lists and may use the wildcard and negation operators described
in the PATTERNS section of ssh_config(5).
The patterns in an Address criteria may additionally contain ad-
dresses to match in CIDR address/masklen format, e.g.
"192.0.2.0/24" or "3ffe:ffff::/32". Note that the mask length
provided must be consistent with the address - it is an error to
specify a mask length that is too long for the address or one
with bits set in this host portion of the address. For example,
"192.0.2.0/33" and "192.0.2.0/8" respectively.
Only a subset of keywords may be used on the lines following a
Match keyword. Available keywords are AllowAgentForwarding,
AllowTcpForwarding, Banner, ChrootDirectory, ForceCommand,
GatewayPorts, GSSAPIAuthentication, HostbasedAuthentication,
KbdInteractiveAuthentication, KerberosAuthentication,
MaskRemoteAddress, MaxAuthTries, MaxSessions,
PasswordAuthentication, PermitEmptyPasswords, PermitOpen,
PermitRootLogin, PubkeyAuthentication, RhostsRSAAuthentication,
RSAAuthentication, X11DisplayOffset, X11Forwarding and
X11UseLocalHost.
MaxAuthTries
Specifies the maximum number of authentication attempts permitted
per connection. Once the number of failures reaches half this
value, additional failures are logged. The default is 6.
MaxSessions
Specifies the maximum number of open sessions permitted per net-
work connection. The default is 10.
MaxStartups
Specifies the maximum number of concurrent unauthenticated con-
nections to the SSH daemon. Additional connections will be
dropped until authentication succeeds or the LoginGraceTime ex-
pires for a connection. The default is 10.
Alternatively, random early drop can be enabled by specifying the
three colon separated values "start:rate:full" (e.g. "10:30:60").
sshd(8) will refuse connection attempts with a probability of
"rate/100" (30%) if there are currently "start" (10) unauthenti-
cated connections. The probability increases linearly and all
connection attempts are refused if the number of unauthenticated
connections reaches "full" (60).
PasswordAuthentication
Specifies whether password authentication is allowed. The default
is "yes".
PermitEmptyPasswords
When password authentication is allowed, it specifies whether the
server allows login to accounts with empty password strings. The
default is "no".
PermitOpen
Specifies the destinations to which TCP port forwarding is per-
mitted. The forwarding specification must be one of the following
forms:
PermitOpen host:port
PermitOpen IPv4_addr:port
PermitOpen [IPv6_addr]:port
Multiple forwards may be specified by separating them with whi-
tespace. An argument of "any" can be used to remove all restric-
tions and permit any forwarding requests. By default all port
forwarding requests are permitted.
PermitRootLogin
Specifies whether root can log in using ssh(1). The argument must
be "yes", "without-password", "forced-commands-only", or "no".
The default is "no".
If this option is set to "without-password", password authentica-
tion is disabled for root.
If this option is set to "forced-commands-only", root login with
public key authentication will be allowed, but only if the
command option has been specified (which may be useful for taking
remote backups even if root login is normally not allowed). All
other authentication methods are disabled for root.
If this option is set to "no", root is not allowed to log in.
PermitTunnel
Specifies whether tun(4) device forwarding is allowed. The argu-
ment must be "yes", "point-to-point" (layer 3), "ethernet" (layer
2), or "no". Specifying "yes" permits both "point-to-point" and
"ethernet". The default is "no". Use of this option is
discouraged in favour of OpenVPN until datagram transport is ad-
ded.
PermitUserEnvironment
Specifies whether ~/.etc/ssh/environment and environment= options
in ~/.etc/ssh/authorised_keys are processed by sshd(8). The de-
fault is "no". Enabling environment processing may enable users
to bypass access restrictions in some configurations using
mechanisms such as LD_PRELOAD.
PidFile
Specifies the file that contains the process ID of the SSH dae-
mon. The default is /var/run/sshd.pid.
Port Specifies the port number that sshd(8) listens on. The default is
22. Multiple options of this type are permitted. See also
ListenAddress.
PrintLastLog
Specifies whether sshd(8) should print the date and time of the
last user login when a user logs in interactively. The default is
"yes".
PrintMotd
Specifies whether sshd(8) should print /etc/motd when a user logs
in interactively. (On some systems it is also printed by the
shell, /etc/profile, or equivalent.) The default is "yes".
Protocol
Specifies the protocol versions sshd(8) supports. The possible
values are '1' and '2'. Multiple versions must be comma-
separated. The default is "2,1". Note that the order of the pro-
tocol list does not indicate preference, because the client
selects among multiple protocol versions offered by the server.
Specifying "2,1" is identical to "1,2".
PubkeyAuthentication
Specifies whether public key authentication is allowed. The de-
fault is "yes". Note that this option applies to protocol version
2 only.
RhostsRSAAuthentication
Specifies whether rhosts or /etc/hosts.equiv authentication to-
gether with successful RSA host authentication is allowed. The
default is "no". This option applies to protocol version 1 only.
RSAAuthentication
Specifies whether pure RSA authentication is allowed. The default
is "yes". This option applies to protocol version 1 only.
ServerKeyBits
Defines the number of bits in the ephemeral protocol version 1
server key. The minimum value is 512, and the default is 1024.
StrictModes
Specifies whether sshd(8) should check file modes and ownership
of the user's files and home directory before accepting login.
This is normally desirable because novices sometimes accidentally
leave their directory or files world-writable. The default is
"yes".
Subsystem
Configures an external subsystem (e.g. file transfer daemon). Ar-
guments should be a subsystem name and a command (with optional
arguments) to execute upon subsystem request.
The command sftp-server(8) implements the "sftp" file transfer
subsystem.
Alternately the name "internal-sftp" implements an in-process
"sftp" server. This may simplify configurations using
ChrootDirectory to force a different filesystem root on clients.
By default no subsystems are defined. The default configuration
file enables the SFTP daemon. Note that this option applies to
protocol version 2 only.
SyslogFacility
Gives the facility code that is used when logging messages from
sshd(8). The possible values are: DAEMON, USER, AUTH, LOCAL0, LO-
CAL1, LOCAL2, LOCAL3, LOCAL4, LOCAL5, LOCAL6, LOCAL7. The default
is AUTH.
TCPKeepAlive
Specifies whether the system should send TCP keepalive messages
to the other side. If they are sent, death of the connection or
crash of one of the machines will be properly noticed. However,
this means that connections will die if the route is down tem-
porarily, and some people find it annoying. On the other hand, if
TCP keepalives are not sent, sessions may hang indefinitely on
the server, leaving "ghost" users and consuming server resources.
The default is "yes" (to send TCP keepalive messages), and the
server will notice if the network goes down or the client host
crashes. This avoids infinitely hanging sessions.
To disable TCP keepalive messages, the value should be set to
"no".
UseDNS Specifies whether sshd(8) should look up the remote host name and
check that the resolved host name for the remote IP address maps
back to the very same IP address. The default is "yes".
UseLogin
Specifies whether login(1) is used for interactive login ses-
sions. The default is "no". Note that login(1) is never used for
remote command execution. Note also, that if this is enabled,
X11Forwarding will be disabled because login(1) does not know how
to handle xauth(1) cookies. If UsePrivilegeSeparation is speci-
fied, it will be disabled after authentication.
UsePrivilegeSeparation
Specifies whether sshd(8) separates privileges by creating an
unprivileged child process to deal with incoming network traffic.
After successful authentication, another process will be created
that has the privilege of the authenticated user. The goal of
privilege separation is to prevent privilege escalation by con-
taining any corruption within the unprivileged processes. The de-
fault is "yes".
X11DisplayOffset
Specifies the first display number available for sshd(8)'s X11
forwarding. This prevents sshd from interfering with real X11
servers. The default is 10.
X11Forwarding
Specifies whether X11 forwarding is permitted. The argument must
be "yes" or "no". The default is "no".
When X11 forwarding is enabled, there may be additional exposure
to the server and to client displays if the sshd(8) proxy display
is configured to listen on the wildcard address (see
X11UseLocalhost below), though this is not the default. Addition-
ally, the authentication spoofing and authentication data verifi-
cation and substitution occur on the client side. The security
risk of using X11 forwarding is that the client's X11 display
server may be exposed to attack when the SSH client requests for-
warding (see the warnings for ForwardX11 in ssh_config(5)). A
system administrator may have a stance in which they want to pro-
tect clients that may expose themselves to attack by unwittingly
requesting X11 forwarding, which can warrant a "no" setting.
Note that disabling X11 forwarding does not prevent users from
forwarding X11 traffic, as users can always install their own
forwarders. X11 forwarding is automatically disabled if UseLogin
is enabled.
X11UseLocalhost
Specifies whether sshd(8) should bind the X11 forwarding server
to the loopback address or to the wildcard address. By default,
sshd binds the forwarding server to the loopback address and sets
the hostname part of the DISPLAY environment variable to
"localhost". This prevents remote hosts from connecting to the
proxy display. However, some older X11 clients may not function
with this configuration. X11UseLocalhost may be set to "no" to
specify that the forwarding server should be bound to the wild-
card address. The argument must be "yes" or "no". The default is
"yes".
XAuthLocation
Specifies the full pathname of the xauth(1) program. The default
is /usr/X11R6/bin/xauth.
sshd(8) command-line arguments and configuration file options that speci-
fy time may be expressed using a sequence of the form: time[qualifier],
where time is a positive integer value and qualifier is one of the fol-
lowing:
<none> seconds
s | S seconds
m | M minutes
h | H hours
d | D days
w | W weeks
Each member of the sequence is added together to calculate the total time
value.
Time format examples:
600 600 seconds (10 minutes)
10m 10 minutes
1h30m 1 hour 30 minutes (90 minutes)
/etc/ssh/sshd_config
Contains configuration data for sshd(8). This file should be
writable by root only, but it is recommended (though not neces-
sary) that it be world-readable.
sshd(8)
OpenSSH is a derivative of the original and free ssh 1.2.12 release by
Tatu Ylonen. Aaron Campbell, Bob Beck, Markus Friedl, Niels Provos, Theo
de Raadt and Dug Song removed many bugs, re-added newer features and
created OpenSSH. Markus Friedl contributed the support for SSH protocol
versions 1.5 and 2.0. Niels Provos and Markus Friedl contributed support
for privilege separation.
MirBSD #10-current May 3, 2018 9