3 .\" Author: Tatu Ylonen <ylo@cs.hut.fi>
4 .\" Copyright (c) 1995 Tatu Ylonen <ylo@cs.hut.fi>, Espoo, Finland
5 .\" All rights reserved
7 .\" As far as I am concerned, the code I have written for this software
8 .\" can be used freely for any purpose. Any derived versions of this
9 .\" software must be clearly marked as such, and if the derived work is
10 .\" incompatible with the protocol description in the RFC file, it must be
11 .\" called by a name other than "ssh" or "Secure Shell".
13 .\" Copyright (c) 1999,2000 Markus Friedl. All rights reserved.
14 .\" Copyright (c) 1999 Aaron Campbell. All rights reserved.
15 .\" Copyright (c) 1999 Theo de Raadt. All rights reserved.
17 .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
18 .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
20 .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
21 .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
22 .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
23 .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
24 .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
26 .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR
27 .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES
28 .\" OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED.
29 .\" IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT,
30 .\" INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT
31 .\" NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE,
32 .\" DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY
33 .\" THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
34 .\" (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF
35 .\" THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
37 .\" $OpenBSD: sshd_config.5,v 1.68 2006/07/21 12:43:36 dtucker Exp $
38 .Dd September 25, 1999
43 .Nd OpenSSH SSH daemon configuration file
45 .Bl -tag -width Ds -compact
46 .It Pa /etc/ssh/sshd_config
50 reads configuration data from
51 .Pa /etc/ssh/sshd_config
52 (or the file specified with
55 The file contains keyword-argument pairs, one per line.
58 and empty lines are interpreted as comments.
59 Arguments may optionally be enclosed in double quotes
61 in order to represent arguments containing spaces.
64 keywords and their meanings are as follows (note that
65 keywords are case-insensitive and arguments are case-sensitive):
68 Specifies what environment variables sent by the client will be copied into
75 for how to configure the client.
76 Note that environment passing is only supported for protocol 2.
77 Variables are specified by name, which may contain the wildcard characters
81 Multiple environment variables may be separated by whitespace or spread
85 Be warned that some environment variables could be used to bypass restricted
87 For this reason, care should be taken in the use of this directive.
88 The default is not to accept any environment variables.
90 Specifies which address family should be used by
101 This keyword can be followed by a list of group name patterns, separated
103 If specified, login is allowed only for users whose primary
104 group or supplementary group list matches one of the patterns.
105 Only group names are valid; a numerical group ID is not recognized.
106 By default, login is allowed for all groups.
107 The allow/deny directives are processed in the following order:
118 for more information on patterns.
119 .It Cm AllowTcpForwarding
120 Specifies whether TCP forwarding is permitted.
123 Note that disabling TCP forwarding does not improve security unless
124 users are also denied shell access, as they can always install their
127 This keyword can be followed by a list of user name patterns, separated
129 If specified, login is allowed only for user names that
130 match one of the patterns.
131 Only user names are valid; a numerical user ID is not recognized.
132 By default, login is allowed for all users.
133 If the pattern takes the form USER@HOST then USER and HOST
134 are separately checked, restricting logins to particular
135 users from particular hosts.
136 The allow/deny directives are processed in the following order:
147 for more information on patterns.
148 .It Cm AuthorizedKeysFile
149 Specifies the file that contains the public keys that can be used
150 for user authentication.
151 .Cm AuthorizedKeysFile
152 may contain tokens of the form %T which are substituted during connection
154 The following tokens are defined: %% is replaced by a literal '%',
155 %h is replaced by the home directory of the user being authenticated, and
156 %u is replaced by the username of that user.
158 .Cm AuthorizedKeysFile
159 is taken to be an absolute path or one relative to the user's home
162 .Dq .ssh/authorized_keys .
164 In some jurisdictions, sending a warning message before authentication
165 may be relevant for getting legal protection.
166 The contents of the specified file are sent to the remote user before
167 authentication is allowed.
168 This option is only available for protocol version 2.
169 By default, no banner is displayed.
170 .It Cm ChallengeResponseAuthentication
171 Specifies whether challenge-response authentication is allowed.
172 All authentication styles from
178 Specifies the ciphers allowed for protocol version 2.
179 Multiple ciphers must be comma-separated.
180 The supported ciphers are
195 .Bd -literal -offset 3n
196 aes128-cbc,3des-cbc,blowfish-cbc,cast128-cbc,arcfour128,
197 arcfour256,arcfour,aes192-cbc,aes256-cbc,aes128-ctr,
198 aes192-ctr,aes256-ctr
200 .It Cm ClientAliveCountMax
201 Sets the number of client alive messages (see below) which may be
204 receiving any messages back from the client.
205 If this threshold is reached while client alive messages are being sent,
206 sshd will disconnect the client, terminating the session.
207 It is important to note that the use of client alive messages is very
211 The client alive messages are sent through the encrypted channel
212 and therefore will not be spoofable.
213 The TCP keepalive option enabled by
216 The client alive mechanism is valuable when the client or
217 server depend on knowing when a connection has become inactive.
219 The default value is 3.
221 .Cm ClientAliveInterval
222 (see below) is set to 15, and
223 .Cm ClientAliveCountMax
224 is left at the default, unresponsive SSH clients
225 will be disconnected after approximately 45 seconds.
226 This option applies to protocol version 2 only.
227 .It Cm ClientAliveInterval
228 Sets a timeout interval in seconds after which if no data has been received
231 will send a message through the encrypted
232 channel to request a response from the client.
234 is 0, indicating that these messages will not be sent to the client.
235 This option applies to protocol version 2 only.
237 Specifies whether compression is allowed, or delayed until
238 the user has authenticated successfully.
247 This keyword can be followed by a list of group name patterns, separated
249 Login is disallowed for users whose primary group or supplementary
250 group list matches one of the patterns.
251 Only group names are valid; a numerical group ID is not recognized.
252 By default, login is allowed for all groups.
253 The allow/deny directives are processed in the following order:
264 for more information on patterns.
266 This keyword can be followed by a list of user name patterns, separated
268 Login is disallowed for user names that match one of the patterns.
269 Only user names are valid; a numerical user ID is not recognized.
270 By default, login is allowed for all users.
271 If the pattern takes the form USER@HOST then USER and HOST
272 are separately checked, restricting logins to particular
273 users from particular hosts.
274 The allow/deny directives are processed in the following order:
285 for more information on patterns.
287 Forces the execution of the command specified by
289 ignoring any command supplied by the client.
290 The command is invoked by using the user's login shell with the -c option.
291 This applies to shell, command, or subsystem execution.
292 It is most useful inside a
295 The command originally supplied by the client is available in the
296 .Ev SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND
297 environment variable.
299 Specifies whether remote hosts are allowed to connect to ports
300 forwarded for the client.
303 binds remote port forwardings to the loopback address.
304 This prevents other remote hosts from connecting to forwarded ports.
306 can be used to specify that sshd
307 should allow remote port forwardings to bind to non-loopback addresses, thus
308 allowing other hosts to connect.
311 to force remote port forwardings to be available to the local host only,
313 to force remote port forwardings to bind to the wildcard address, or
315 to allow the client to select the address to which the forwarding is bound.
318 .It Cm GSSAPIAuthentication
319 Specifies whether user authentication based on GSSAPI is allowed.
322 Note that this option applies to protocol version 2 only.
323 .It Cm GSSAPICleanupCredentials
324 Specifies whether to automatically destroy the user's credentials cache
328 Note that this option applies to protocol version 2 only.
329 .It Cm HostbasedAuthentication
330 Specifies whether rhosts or /etc/hosts.equiv authentication together
331 with successful public key client host authentication is allowed
332 (host-based authentication).
333 This option is similar to
334 .Cm RhostsRSAAuthentication
335 and applies to protocol version 2 only.
339 Specifies a file containing a private host key
342 .Pa /etc/ssh/ssh_host_key
343 for protocol version 1, and
344 .Pa /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key
346 .Pa /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key
347 for protocol version 2.
350 will refuse to use a file if it is group/world-accessible.
351 It is possible to have multiple host key files.
353 keys are used for version 1 and
357 are used for version 2 of the SSH protocol.
363 files will not be used in
364 .Cm RhostsRSAAuthentication
366 .Cm HostbasedAuthentication .
370 .Pa /etc/shosts.equiv
374 .It Cm IgnoreUserKnownHosts
377 should ignore the user's
378 .Pa ~/.ssh/known_hosts
380 .Cm RhostsRSAAuthentication
382 .Cm HostbasedAuthentication .
385 .It Cm KerberosAuthentication
386 Specifies whether the password provided by the user for
387 .Cm PasswordAuthentication
388 will be validated through the Kerberos KDC.
389 To use this option, the server needs a
390 Kerberos servtab which allows the verification of the KDC's identity.
393 .It Cm KerberosGetAFSToken
394 If AFS is active and the user has a Kerberos 5 TGT, attempt to acquire
395 an AFS token before accessing the user's home directory.
398 .It Cm KerberosOrLocalPasswd
399 If password authentication through Kerberos fails then
400 the password will be validated via any additional local mechanism
405 .It Cm KerberosTicketCleanup
406 Specifies whether to automatically destroy the user's ticket cache
410 .It Cm KeyRegenerationInterval
411 In protocol version 1, the ephemeral server key is automatically regenerated
412 after this many seconds (if it has been used).
413 The purpose of regeneration is to prevent
414 decrypting captured sessions by later breaking into the machine and
416 The key is never stored anywhere.
417 If the value is 0, the key is never regenerated.
418 The default is 3600 (seconds).
420 Specifies the local addresses
423 The following forms may be used:
425 .Bl -item -offset indent -compact
429 .Ar host No | Ar IPv4_addr No | Ar IPv6_addr
434 .Ar host No | Ar IPv4_addr No : Ar port
440 .Ar host No | Ar IPv6_addr Oc : Ar port
447 sshd will listen on the address and all prior
450 The default is to listen on all local addresses.
453 options are permitted.
456 options must precede this option for non-port qualified addresses.
457 .It Cm LoginGraceTime
458 The server disconnects after this time if the user has not
459 successfully logged in.
460 If the value is 0, there is no time limit.
461 The default is 120 seconds.
463 Gives the verbosity level that is used when logging messages from
465 The possible values are:
466 QUIET, FATAL, ERROR, INFO, VERBOSE, DEBUG, DEBUG1, DEBUG2, and DEBUG3.
468 DEBUG and DEBUG1 are equivalent.
469 DEBUG2 and DEBUG3 each specify higher levels of debugging output.
470 Logging with a DEBUG level violates the privacy of users and is not recommended.
472 Specifies the available MAC (message authentication code) algorithms.
473 The MAC algorithm is used in protocol version 2
474 for data integrity protection.
475 Multiple algorithms must be comma-separated.
477 .Dq hmac-md5,hmac-sha1,hmac-ripemd160,hmac-sha1-96,hmac-md5-96 .
479 Introduces a conditional block.
480 If all of the criteria on the
482 line are satisfied, the keywords on the following lines override those
483 set in the global section of the config file, until either another
485 line or the end of the file.
488 are one or more criteria-pattern pairs.
489 The available criteria are
494 Only a subset of keywords may be used on the lines following a
497 Available keywords are
498 .Cm AllowTcpForwarding ,
502 .Cm X11DisplayOffset ,
505 .Cm X11UseLocalHost .
507 Specifies the maximum number of authentication attempts permitted per
509 Once the number of failures reaches half this value,
510 additional failures are logged.
513 Specifies the maximum number of concurrent unauthenticated connections to the
515 Additional connections will be dropped until authentication succeeds or the
517 expires for a connection.
520 Alternatively, random early drop can be enabled by specifying
521 the three colon separated values
525 will refuse connection attempts with a probability of
528 if there are currently
531 unauthenticated connections.
532 The probability increases linearly and all connection attempts
533 are refused if the number of unauthenticated connections reaches
536 .It Cm PasswordAuthentication
537 Specifies whether password authentication is allowed.
540 .It Cm PermitEmptyPasswords
541 When password authentication is allowed, it specifies whether the
542 server allows login to accounts with empty password strings.
546 Specifies the destinations to which TCP port forwarding is permitted.
547 The forwarding specification must be one of the following forms:
549 .Bl -item -offset indent -compact
563 .Ar \&[ IPv6_addr \&] : port
567 Multiple forwards may be specified by separating them with whitespace.
570 can be used to remove all restrictions and permit any forwarding requests.
571 By default all port forwarding requests are permitted.
572 .It Cm PermitRootLogin
573 Specifies whether root can log in using
577 .Dq without-password ,
578 .Dq forced-commands-only ,
584 If this option is set to
585 .Dq without-password ,
586 password authentication is disabled for root.
588 If this option is set to
589 .Dq forced-commands-only ,
590 root login with public key authentication will be allowed,
593 option has been specified
594 (which may be useful for taking remote backups even if root login is
595 normally not allowed).
596 All other authentication methods are disabled for root.
598 If this option is set to
600 root is not allowed to log in.
604 device forwarding is allowed.
620 .It Cm PermitUserEnvironment
622 .Pa ~/.ssh/environment
626 .Pa ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
631 Enabling environment processing may enable users to bypass access
632 restrictions in some configurations using mechanisms such as
635 Specifies the file that contains the process ID of the
638 .Pa /var/run/sshd.pid .
640 Specifies the port number that
644 Multiple options of this type are permitted.
650 should print the date and time of the last user login when a user logs
659 when a user logs in interactively.
660 (On some systems it is also printed by the shell,
666 Specifies the protocol versions
669 The possible values are
673 Multiple versions must be comma-separated.
676 Note that the order of the protocol list does not indicate preference,
677 because the client selects among multiple protocol versions offered
683 .It Cm PubkeyAuthentication
684 Specifies whether public key authentication is allowed.
687 Note that this option applies to protocol version 2 only.
688 .It Cm RhostsRSAAuthentication
689 Specifies whether rhosts or /etc/hosts.equiv authentication together
690 with successful RSA host authentication is allowed.
693 This option applies to protocol version 1 only.
694 .It Cm RSAAuthentication
695 Specifies whether pure RSA authentication is allowed.
698 This option applies to protocol version 1 only.
700 Defines the number of bits in the ephemeral protocol version 1 server key.
701 The minimum value is 512, and the default is 768.
705 should check file modes and ownership of the
706 user's files and home directory before accepting login.
707 This is normally desirable because novices sometimes accidentally leave their
708 directory or files world-writable.
712 Configures an external subsystem (e.g. file transfer daemon).
713 Arguments should be a subsystem name and a command (with optional arguments)
714 to execute upon subsystem request.
719 file transfer subsystem.
720 By default no subsystems are defined.
721 Note that this option applies to protocol version 2 only.
722 .It Cm SyslogFacility
723 Gives the facility code that is used when logging messages from
725 The possible values are: DAEMON, USER, AUTH, LOCAL0, LOCAL1, LOCAL2,
726 LOCAL3, LOCAL4, LOCAL5, LOCAL6, LOCAL7.
729 Specifies whether the system should send TCP keepalive messages to the
731 If they are sent, death of the connection or crash of one
732 of the machines will be properly noticed.
733 However, this means that
734 connections will die if the route is down temporarily, and some people
736 On the other hand, if TCP keepalives are not sent,
737 sessions may hang indefinitely on the server, leaving
739 users and consuming server resources.
743 (to send TCP keepalive messages), and the server will notice
744 if the network goes down or the client host crashes.
745 This avoids infinitely hanging sessions.
747 To disable TCP keepalive messages, the value should be set to
752 should look up the remote host name and check that
753 the resolved host name for the remote IP address maps back to the
754 very same IP address.
760 is used for interactive login sessions.
765 is never used for remote command execution.
766 Note also, that if this is enabled,
768 will be disabled because
770 does not know how to handle
774 .Cm UsePrivilegeSeparation
775 is specified, it will be disabled after authentication.
777 Enables the Pluggable Authentication Module interface.
780 this will enable PAM authentication using
781 .Cm ChallengeResponseAuthentication
783 .Cm PasswordAuthentication
784 in addition to PAM account and session module processing for all
785 authentication types.
787 Because PAM challenge-response authentication usually serves an equivalent
788 role to password authentication, you should disable either
789 .Cm PasswordAuthentication
791 .Cm ChallengeResponseAuthentication.
795 is enabled, you will not be able to run
800 .It Cm UsePrivilegeSeparation
803 separates privileges by creating an unprivileged child process
804 to deal with incoming network traffic.
805 After successful authentication, another process will be created that has
806 the privilege of the authenticated user.
807 The goal of privilege separation is to prevent privilege
808 escalation by containing any corruption within the unprivileged processes.
811 .It Cm X11DisplayOffset
812 Specifies the first display number available for
815 This prevents sshd from interfering with real X11 servers.
818 Specifies whether X11 forwarding is permitted.
826 When X11 forwarding is enabled, there may be additional exposure to
827 the server and to client displays if the
829 proxy display is configured to listen on the wildcard address (see
831 below), though this is not the default.
832 Additionally, the authentication spoofing and authentication data
833 verification and substitution occur on the client side.
834 The security risk of using X11 forwarding is that the client's X11
835 display server may be exposed to attack when the SSH client requests
836 forwarding (see the warnings for
840 A system administrator may have a stance in which they want to
841 protect clients that may expose themselves to attack by unwittingly
842 requesting X11 forwarding, which can warrant a
846 Note that disabling X11 forwarding does not prevent users from
847 forwarding X11 traffic, as users can always install their own forwarders.
848 X11 forwarding is automatically disabled if
851 .It Cm X11UseLocalhost
854 should bind the X11 forwarding server to the loopback address or to
855 the wildcard address.
857 sshd binds the forwarding server to the loopback address and sets the
860 environment variable to
862 This prevents remote hosts from connecting to the proxy display.
863 However, some older X11 clients may not function with this
868 to specify that the forwarding server should be bound to the wildcard
877 Specifies the full pathname of the
881 .Pa /usr/X11R6/bin/xauth .
885 command-line arguments and configuration file options that specify time
886 may be expressed using a sequence of the form:
888 .Ar time Op Ar qualifier ,
892 is a positive integer value and
894 is one of the following:
896 .Bl -tag -width Ds -compact -offset indent
911 Each member of the sequence is added together to calculate
912 the total time value.
914 Time format examples:
916 .Bl -tag -width Ds -compact -offset indent
918 600 seconds (10 minutes)
922 1 hour 30 minutes (90 minutes)
926 .It Pa /etc/ssh/sshd_config
927 Contains configuration data for
929 This file should be writable by root only, but it is recommended
930 (though not necessary) that it be world-readable.
935 OpenSSH is a derivative of the original and free
936 ssh 1.2.12 release by Tatu Ylonen.
937 Aaron Campbell, Bob Beck, Markus Friedl, Niels Provos,
938 Theo de Raadt and Dug Song
939 removed many bugs, re-added newer features and
941 Markus Friedl contributed the support for SSH
942 protocol versions 1.5 and 2.0.
943 Niels Provos and Markus Friedl contributed support
944 for privilege separation.