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SSHD_CONFIG(5) File Formats Manual SSHD_CONFIG(5) NAME sshd_config -- OpenSSH daemon configuration file DESCRIPTION sshd(8) reads configuration data from /etc/ssh/sshd_config (or the file specified with -f on the command line). The file contains keyword-ar- gument pairs, one per line. Unless noted otherwise, for each keyword, the first obtained value will be used. Lines starting with `#' and empty lines are interpreted as comments. Arguments may optionally be enclosed in double quotes (") in order to represent arguments contain- ing 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 and SetEnv in ssh_config(5) for how to configure the client. The TERM en- vironment variable is always accepted whenever the client re- quests a pseudo-terminal as it is required by the protocol. Variables are specified by name, which may contain the wildcard characters `*' and `?'. Multiple environment variables may be separated by whitespace or spread across multiple AcceptEnv di- rectives. Be warned that some environment variables could be used to bypass restricted user environments. For this reason, care should be taken in the use of this directive. The default is not to accept any environment variables. AddressFamily Specifies which address family should be used by sshd(8). Valid arguments are any (the default), inet (use IPv4 only), or inet6 (use IPv6 only). AllowAgentForwarding Specifies whether ssh-agent(1) forwarding is permitted. The default is yes. Note that disabling agent forwarding does not improve 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 groups directives are processed in the following order: DenyGroups, AllowGroups. See PATTERNS in ssh_config(5) for more information on patterns. This keyword may appear multiple times in sshd_config with each instance appending to the list. AllowStreamLocalForwarding Specifies whether StreamLocal (Unix-domain socket) forwarding is permitted. The available options are yes (the default) or all to allow StreamLocal forwarding, no to prevent all Stream- Local forwarding, local to allow local (from the perspective of ssh(1)) forwarding only or remote to allow remote forwarding only. Note that disabling StreamLocal forwarding does not im- prove security unless users are also denied shell access, as they can always install their own forwarders. AllowTcpForwarding Specifies whether TCP forwarding is permitted. The available options are yes (the default) or all to allow TCP forwarding, no to prevent all TCP forwarding, local to allow local (from the perspective of ssh(1)) forwarding only or remote to allow remote forwarding only. Note that disabling TCP forwarding does not improve security unless users are also denied shell access, as they can always 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, lo- gin is allowed for all users. If the pattern takes the form USER@HOST then USER and HOST are separately checked, restrict- ing logins to particular users from particular hosts. HOST criteria may additionally contain addresses to match in CIDR address/masklen format. The allow/deny users directives are processed in the following order: DenyUsers, AllowUsers. See PATTERNS in ssh_config(5) for more information on patterns. This keyword may appear multiple times in sshd_config with each instance appending to the list. AuthenticationMethods Specifies the authentication methods that must be successfully completed for a user to be granted access. This option must be followed by one or more lists of comma-separated authentication method names, or by the single string any to indicate the de- fault behaviour of accepting any single authentication method. If the default is overridden, then successful authentication requires completion of every method in at least one of these lists. For example, "publickey,password publickey,keyboard-interactive" would require the user to com- plete public key authentication, followed by either password or keyboard interactive authentication. Only methods that are next in one or more lists are offered at each stage, so for this example it would not be possible to attempt password or keyboard-interactive authentication before public key. For keyboard interactive authentication it is also possible to restrict authentication to a specific device by appending a colon followed by the device identifier bsdauth or pam. de- pending on the server configuration. For example, "keyboard-interactive:bsdauth" would restrict keyboard interac- tive authentication to the bsdauth device. If the publickey method is listed more than once, sshd(8) veri- fies that keys that have been used successfully are not reused for subsequent authentications. For example, "publickey,publickey" requires successful authentication using two different public keys. Note that each authentication method listed should also be ex- plicitly enabled in the configuration. The available authentication methods are: "gssapi-with-mic", "hostbased", "keyboard-interactive", "none" (used for access to password-less accounts when PermitEmptyPasswords is enabled), "password" and "publickey". AuthorizedKeysCommand Specifies a program to be used to look up the user's public keys. The program must be owned by root, not writable by group or others and specified by an absolute path. Arguments to AuthorizedKeysCommand accept the tokens described in the "TOKENS" section. If no arguments are specified then the user- name of the target user is used. The program should produce on standard output zero or more lines of authorized_keys output (see "AUTHORIZED_KEYS" in sshd(8)). AuthorizedKeysCommand is tried after the usual AuthorizedKeysFile files and will not be executed if a matching key is found there. By default, no AuthorizedKeysCommand is run. AuthorizedKeysCommandUser Specifies the user under whose account the AuthorizedKeysCommand is run. It is recommended to use a dedi- cated user that has no other role on the host than running au- thorized keys commands. If AuthorizedKeysCommand is specified but AuthorizedKeysCommandUser is not, then sshd(8) will refuse to start. AuthorizedKeysFile Specifies the file that contains the public keys used for user authentication. The format is described in the AUTHORIZED_KEYS FILE FORMAT section of sshd(8). Arguments to AuthorizedKeysFile accept the tokens described in the "TOKENS" section. After expansion, AuthorizedKeysFile is taken to be an absolute path or one relative to the user's home directory. Multiple files may be listed, separated by whitespace. Alter- nately this option may be set to none to skip checking for user keys in files. The default is ".ssh/authorized_keys .ssh/authorized_keys2". AuthorizedPrincipalsCommand Specifies a program to be used to generate the list of allowed certificate principals as per AuthorizedPrincipalsFile. The program must be owned by root, not writable by group or others and specified by an absolute path. Arguments to AuthorizedPrincipalsCommand accept the tokens described in the "TOKENS" section. If no arguments are specified then the user- name of the target user is used. The program should produce on standard output zero or more lines of AuthorizedPrincipalsFile output. If either AuthorizedPrincipalsCommand or AuthorizedPrincipalsFile is specified, then certificates offered by the client for authen- tication must contain a principal that is listed. By default, no AuthorizedPrincipalsCommand is run. AuthorizedPrincipalsCommandUser Specifies the user under whose account the AuthorizedPrincipalsCommand is run. It is recommended to use a dedicated user that has no other role on the host than running authorized principals commands. If AuthorizedPrincipalsCommand is specified but AuthorizedPrincipalsCommandUser is not, then sshd(8) will refuse to start. AuthorizedPrincipalsFile Specifies a file that lists principal names that are accepted for certificate authentication. When using certificates signed by a key listed in TrustedUserCAKeys, this file lists names, one of which must appear in the certificate for it to be ac- cepted for authentication. Names are listed one per line pre- ceded by key options (as described in "AUTHORIZED_KEYS FILE FORMAT" in sshd(8)). Empty lines and comments starting with `#' are ignored. Arguments to AuthorizedPrincipalsFile accept the tokens de- scribed in the "TOKENS" section. After expansion, AuthorizedPrincipalsFile is taken to be an absolute path or one relative to the user's home directory. The default is none, i.e. not to use a principals file - in this case, the username of the user must appear in a certificate's principals list for it to be accepted. Note that AuthorizedPrincipalsFile is only used when authenti- cation proceeds using a CA listed in TrustedUserCAKeys and is not consulted for certification authorities trusted via ~/.ssh/authorized_keys, though the principals= key option of- fers a similar facility (see sshd(8) for details). 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. By default, no banner is displayed. CASignatureAlgorithms Specifies which algorithms are allowed for signing of certifi- cates by certificate authorities (CAs). The default is: ssh-ed25519,ecdsa-sha2-nistp256, ecdsa-sha2-nistp384,ecdsa-sha2-nistp521, sk-ssh-ed25519@openssh.com, sk-ecdsa-sha2-nistp256@openssh.com, rsa-sha2-512,rsa-sha2-256 If the specified list begins with a `+' character, then the specified algorithms will be appended to the default set in- stead of replacing them. If the specified list begins with a `-' character, then the specified algorithms (including wild- cards) will be removed from the default set instead of replac- ing them. Certificates signed using other algorithms will not be accepted for public key or host-based authentication. ChannelTimeout Specifies whether and how quickly sshd(8) should close inactive channels. Timeouts are specified as one or more "type=interval" pairs separated by whitespace, where the "type" must be a channel type name (as described in the table below), optionally containing wildcard characters. The timeout value "interval" is specified in seconds or may use any of the units documented in the "TIME FORMATS" section. For example, "session:*=5m" would cause all sessions to terminate after five minutes of inactivity. Specifying a zero value dis- ables the inactivity timeout. The available channel types include: agent-connection Open connections to ssh-agent(1). direct-tcpip, direct-streamlocal@openssh.com Open TCP or Unix socket (respectively) connections that have been established from a ssh(1) local forwarding, i.e. LocalForward or DynamicForward. forwarded-tcpip, forwarded-streamlocal@openssh.com Open TCP or Unix socket (respectively) connections that have been established to a sshd(8) listening on behalf of a ssh(1) remote forwarding, i.e. RemoteForward. session:command Command execution sessions. session:shell Interactive shell sessions. session:subsystem:... Subsystem sessions, e.g. for sftp(1), which could be identified as session:subsystem:sftp. x11-connection Open X11 forwarding sessions. Note that in all the above cases, terminating an inactive ses- sion does not guarantee to remove all resources associated with the session, e.g. shell processes or X11 clients relating to the session may continue to execute. Moreover, terminating an inactive channel or session does not necessarily close the SSH connection, nor does it prevent a client from requesting another channel of the same type. In particular, expiring an inactive forwarding session does not prevent another identical forwarding from being subsequently created. See also UnusedConnectionTimeout, which may be used in conjunction with this option. The default is not to expire channels of any type for inactiv- ity. ChrootDirectory Specifies the pathname of a directory to chroot(2) to after au- thentication. At session startup sshd(8) checks that all com- ponents of the pathname are root-owned directories which are not writable by any other user or group. After the chroot, sshd(8) changes the working directory to the user's home direc- tory. Arguments to ChrootDirectory accept the tokens described in the "TOKENS" section. The ChrootDirectory must contain the necessary files and direc- tories to support the user's session. For an interactive ses- sion 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), and tty(4) devices. For file transfer sessions us- ing SFTP no additional configuration of the environment is nec- essary if the in-process sftp-server is used, though sessions which use logging may require /dev/log inside the chroot direc- tory on some operating systems (see sftp-server(8) for de- tails). For safety, it is very important that the directory hierarchy be prevented from modification by other processes on the system (especially those outside the jail). Misconfiguration can lead to unsafe environments which sshd(8) cannot detect. The default is none, indicating not to chroot(2). Ciphers Specifies the ciphers allowed. Multiple ciphers must be comma- separated. If the specified list begins with a `+' character, then the specified ciphers will be appended to the default set instead of replacing them. If the specified list begins with a `-' character, then the specified ciphers (including wildcards) will be removed from the default set instead of replacing them. If the specified list begins with a `^' character, then the specified ciphers will be placed at the head of the default set. The supported ciphers are: 3des-cbc aes128-cbc aes192-cbc aes256-cbc aes128-ctr aes192-ctr aes256-ctr aes128-gcm@openssh.com aes256-gcm@openssh.com chacha20-poly1305@openssh.com The default is: chacha20-poly1305@openssh.com, aes128-ctr,aes192-ctr,aes256-ctr, aes128-gcm@openssh.com,aes256-gcm@openssh.com The list of available ciphers may also be obtained using "ssh -Q cipher". ClientAliveCountMax Sets the number of client alive messages which may be sent without sshd(8) receiving any messages back from the client. If this threshold is reached while client alive messages are being sent, sshd will disconnect the client, terminating the session. It is important to note that the use of client alive messages is very different from TCPKeepAlive. The client alive messages are sent through the encrypted channel and therefore will not be spoofable. The TCP keepalive option enabled by TCPKeepAlive is spoofable. The client alive mechanism is valu- able when the client or server depend on knowing when a connec- tion has become unresponsive. The default value is 3. If ClientAliveInterval is set to 15, and ClientAliveCountMax is left at the default, unresponsive SSH clients will be disconnected after approximately 45 sec- onds. Setting a zero ClientAliveCountMax disables connection termination. 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. Compression Specifies whether compression is enabled after the user has au- thenticated successfully. The argument must be yes, delayed (a legacy synonym for yes) or no. The default is yes. DenyGroups This keyword can be followed by a list of group name patterns, separated by spaces. Login is disallowed for users whose pri- mary group or supplementary group list matches one of the pat- terns. Only group names are valid; a numerical group ID is not recognized. By default, login is allowed for all groups. The allow/deny groups directives are processed in the following or- der: DenyGroups, AllowGroups. See PATTERNS in ssh_config(5) for more information on patterns. This keyword may appear multiple times in sshd_config with each instance appending to the list. 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 numer- ical 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. HOST criteria may ad- ditionally contain addresses to match in CIDR address/masklen format. The allow/deny users directives are processed in the following order: DenyUsers, AllowUsers. See PATTERNS in ssh_config(5) for more information on patterns. This keyword may appear multiple times in sshd_config with each instance appending to the list. DisableForwarding Disables all forwarding features, including X11, ssh-agent(1), TCP and StreamLocal. This option overrides all other forward- ing-related options and may simplify restricted configurations. ExposeAuthInfo Writes a temporary file containing a list of authentication methods and public credentials (e.g. keys) used to authenticate the user. The location of the file is exposed to the user ses- sion through the SSH_USER_AUTH environment variable. The de- fault is no. FingerprintHash Specifies the hash algorithm used when logging key finger- prints. Valid options are: md5 and sha256. The default is sha256. ForceCommand Forces the execution of the command specified by ForceCommand, ignoring any command supplied by the client and ~/.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. The default is none. 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 for- wardings to bind to non-loopback addresses, thus allowing other hosts to connect. 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. GSSAPIAuthentication Specifies whether user authentication based on GSSAPI is al- lowed. The default is no. GSSAPICleanupCredentials Specifies whether to automatically destroy the user's creden- tials cache on logout. The default is yes. GSSAPIStrictAcceptorCheck Determines whether to be strict about the identity of the GSS- API acceptor a client authenticates against. If set to yes then the client must authenticate against the host service on the current hostname. If set to no then the client may authen- ticate against any service key stored in the machine's default store. This facility is provided to assist with operation on multi homed machines. The default is yes. HostbasedAcceptedAlgorithms Specifies the signature algorithms that will be accepted for hostbased authentication as a list of comma-separated patterns. Alternately if the specified list begins with a `+' character, then the specified signature algorithms will be appended to the default set instead of replacing them. If the specified list begins with a `-' character, then the specified signature algo- rithms (including wildcards) will be removed from the default set instead of replacing them. If the specified list begins with a `^' character, then the specified signature algorithms will be placed at the head of the default set. The default for this option is: ssh-ed25519-cert-v01@openssh.com, ecdsa-sha2-nistp256-cert-v01@openssh.com, ecdsa-sha2-nistp384-cert-v01@openssh.com, ecdsa-sha2-nistp521-cert-v01@openssh.com, sk-ssh-ed25519-cert-v01@openssh.com, sk-ecdsa-sha2-nistp256-cert-v01@openssh.com, rsa-sha2-512-cert-v01@openssh.com, rsa-sha2-256-cert-v01@openssh.com, ssh-ed25519, ecdsa-sha2-nistp256,ecdsa-sha2-nistp384,ecdsa-sha2-nistp521, sk-ssh-ed25519@openssh.com, sk-ecdsa-sha2-nistp256@openssh.com, rsa-sha2-512,rsa-sha2-256 The list of available signature algorithms may also be obtained using "ssh -Q HostbasedAcceptedAlgorithms". This was formerly named HostbasedAcceptedKeyTypes. HostbasedAuthentication Specifies whether rhosts or /etc/hosts.equiv authentication to- gether with successful public key client host authentication is allowed (host-based authentication). The default is no. HostbasedUsesNameFromPacketOnly Specifies whether or not the server will attempt to perform a reverse 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. HostCertificate Specifies a file containing a public host certificate. The certificate's public key must match a private host key already specified by HostKey. The default behaviour of sshd(8) is not to load any certificates. HostKey Specifies a file containing a private host key used by SSH. The defaults are /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ecdsa_key, /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key and /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key. Note that sshd(8) will refuse to use a file if it is group/world-accessible and that the HostKeyAlgorithms option restricts which of the keys are actually used by sshd(8). It is possible to have multiple host key files. It is also possible to specify public host key files instead. In this case operations on the private key will be delegated to an ssh-agent(1). HostKeyAgent Identifies the UNIX-domain socket used to communicate with an agent that has access to the private host keys. If the string "SSH_AUTH_SOCK" is specified, the location of the socket will be read from the SSH_AUTH_SOCK environment variable. HostKeyAlgorithms Specifies the host key signature algorithms that the server of- fers. The default for this option is: ssh-ed25519-cert-v01@openssh.com, ecdsa-sha2-nistp256-cert-v01@openssh.com, ecdsa-sha2-nistp384-cert-v01@openssh.com, ecdsa-sha2-nistp521-cert-v01@openssh.com, sk-ssh-ed25519-cert-v01@openssh.com, sk-ecdsa-sha2-nistp256-cert-v01@openssh.com, rsa-sha2-512-cert-v01@openssh.com, rsa-sha2-256-cert-v01@openssh.com, ssh-ed25519, ecdsa-sha2-nistp256,ecdsa-sha2-nistp384,ecdsa-sha2-nistp521, sk-ssh-ed25519@openssh.com, sk-ecdsa-sha2-nistp256@openssh.com, rsa-sha2-512,rsa-sha2-256 The list of available signature algorithms may also be obtained using "ssh -Q HostKeyAlgorithms". IgnoreRhosts Specifies whether to ignore per-user .rhosts and .shosts files during HostbasedAuthentication. The system-wide /etc/hosts.equiv and /etc/ssh/shosts.equiv are still used re- gardless of this setting. Accepted values are yes (the default) to ignore all per-user files, shosts-only to allow the use of .shosts but to ignore .rhosts or no to allow both .shosts and rhosts. IgnoreUserKnownHosts Specifies whether sshd(8) should ignore the user's ~/.ssh/known_hosts during HostbasedAuthentication and use only the system-wide known hosts file /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts. The default is "no". Include Include the specified configuration file(s). Multiple path- names may be specified and each pathname may contain glob(7) wildcards that will be expanded and processed in lexical order. Files without absolute paths are assumed to be in /etc/ssh. An Include directive may appear inside a Match block to perform conditional inclusion. IPQoS Specifies the IPv4 type-of-service or DSCP class for the con- nection. Accepted values are af11, af12, af13, af21, af22, af23, af31, af32, af33, af41, af42, af43, cs0, cs1, cs2, cs3, cs4, cs5, cs6, cs7, ef, le, lowdelay, throughput, reliability, a numeric value, or none to use the operating system default. This option may take one or two arguments, separated by white- space. If one argument is specified, it is used as the packet class unconditionally. If two values are specified, the first is automatically selected for interactive sessions and the sec- ond for non-interactive sessions. The default is af21 (Low-La- tency Data) for interactive sessions and cs1 (Lower Effort) for non-interactive sessions. KbdInteractiveAuthentication Specifies whether to allow keyboard-interactive authentication. All authentication styles from login.conf(5) are supported. The default is yes. The argument to this keyword must be yes or no. ChallengeResponseAuthentication is a deprecated alias for this. KerberosAuthentication Specifies whether the password provided by the user for PasswordAuthentication will be validated through the Kerberos KDC. To use this option, the server needs a Kerberos servtab which allows the verification of the KDC's identity. The de- fault is no. KerberosGetAFSToken If AFS is active and the user has a Kerberos 5 TGT, attempt to acquire an AFS token before accessing the user's home direc- tory. The default is no. KerberosOrLocalPasswd If password authentication through Kerberos fails then the password will be validated via any additional local mechanism such as /etc/passwd. The default is yes. KerberosTicketCleanup Specifies whether to automatically destroy the user's ticket cache file on logout. The default is yes. KexAlgorithms Specifies the available KEX (Key Exchange) algorithms. Multi- ple algorithms must be comma-separated. Alternately if the specified list begins with a `+' character, then the specified algorithms will be appended to the default set instead of re- placing them. If the specified list begins with a `-' charac- ter, then the specified algorithms (including wildcards) will be removed from the default set instead of replacing them. If the specified list begins with a `^' character, then the speci- fied algorithms will be placed at the head of the default set. The supported algorithms are: curve25519-sha256 curve25519-sha256@libssh.org diffie-hellman-group1-sha1 diffie-hellman-group14-sha1 diffie-hellman-group14-sha256 diffie-hellman-group16-sha512 diffie-hellman-group18-sha512 diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha1 diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256 ecdh-sha2-nistp256 ecdh-sha2-nistp384 ecdh-sha2-nistp521 sntrup761x25519-sha512@openssh.com The default is: sntrup761x25519-sha512@openssh.com, curve25519-sha256,curve25519-sha256@libssh.org, ecdh-sha2-nistp256,ecdh-sha2-nistp384,ecdh-sha2-nistp521, diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256, diffie-hellman-group16-sha512,diffie-hellman-group18-sha512, diffie-hellman-group14-sha256 The list of available key exchange algorithms may also be ob- tained using "ssh -Q KexAlgorithms". ListenAddress Specifies the local addresses sshd(8) should listen on. The following forms may be used: ListenAddress hostname|address [rdomain domain] ListenAddress hostname:port [rdomain domain] ListenAddress IPv4_address:port [rdomain domain] ListenAddress [hostname|address]:port [rdomain domain] The optional rdomain qualifier requests sshd(8) listen in an explicit routing domain. If port is not specified, sshd will listen on the address and all Port options specified. The de- fault is to listen on all local addresses on the current de- fault routing domain. Multiple ListenAddress options are per- mitted. For more information on routing domains, see rdomain(4). 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, VERBOSE, DEBUG, DEBUG1, DEBUG2, and DEBUG3. The default is INFO. DEBUG 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 recom- mended. LogVerbose Specify one or more overrides to LogLevel. An override con- sists of a pattern lists that matches the source file, function and line number to force detailed logging for. For example, an override pattern of: kex.c:*:1000,*:kex_exchange_identification():*,packet.c:* would enable detailed logging for line 1000 of kex.c, every- thing in the kex_exchange_identification() function, and all code in the packet.c file. This option is intended for debug- ging and no overrides are enabled by default. MACs Specifies the available MAC (message authentication code) algo- rithms. The MAC algorithm is used for data integrity protec- tion. Multiple algorithms must be comma-separated. If the specified list begins with a `+' character, then the specified algorithms will be appended to the default set instead of re- placing them. If the specified list begins with a `-' charac- ter, then the specified algorithms (including wildcards) will be removed from the default set instead of replacing them. If the specified list begins with a `^' character, then the speci- fied algorithms will be placed at the head of the default set. The algorithms that contain "-etm" calculate the MAC after en- cryption (encrypt-then-mac). These are considered safer and their use recommended. The supported MACs are: hmac-md5 hmac-md5-96 hmac-sha1 hmac-sha1-96 hmac-sha2-256 hmac-sha2-512 umac-64@openssh.com umac-128@openssh.com hmac-md5-etm@openssh.com hmac-md5-96-etm@openssh.com hmac-sha1-etm@openssh.com hmac-sha1-96-etm@openssh.com hmac-sha2-256-etm@openssh.com hmac-sha2-512-etm@openssh.com umac-64-etm@openssh.com umac-128-etm@openssh.com The default is: umac-64-etm@openssh.com,umac-128-etm@openssh.com, hmac-sha2-256-etm@openssh.com,hmac-sha2-512-etm@openssh.com, hmac-sha1-etm@openssh.com, umac-64@openssh.com,umac-128@openssh.com, hmac-sha2-256,hmac-sha2-512,hmac-sha1 The list of available MAC algorithms may also be obtained using "ssh -Q mac". 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, until either another Match line or the end of the file. If a keyword appears in multiple Match blocks that are satisfied, only the first instance of the keyword is applied. The arguments to Match are one or more criteria-pattern pairs or the single token All which matches all criteria. The avail- able criteria are User, Group, Host, LocalAddress, LocalPort, RDomain, and Address (with RDomain representing the rdomain(4) on which the connection was received). The match patterns may consist of single entries or comma-sepa- rated lists and may use the wildcard and negation operators de- scribed in the "PATTERNS" section of ssh_config(5). The patterns in an Address criteria may additionally contain addresses to match in CIDR address/masklen format, such as 192.0.2.0/24 or 2001:db8::/32. Note that the mask length pro- vided 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 exam- ple, 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 AcceptEnv, AllowAgentForwarding, AllowGroups, AllowStreamLocalForwarding, AllowTcpForwarding, AllowUsers, AuthenticationMethods, AuthorizedKeysCommand, AuthorizedKeysCommandUser, AuthorizedKeysFile, AuthorizedPrincipalsCommand, AuthorizedPrincipalsCommandUser, AuthorizedPrincipalsFile, Banner, CASignatureAlgorithms, ChannelTimeout, ChrootDirectory, ClientAliveCountMax, ClientAliveInterval, DenyGroups, DenyUsers, DisableForwarding, ExposeAuthInfo, ForceCommand, GatewayPorts, GSSAPIAuthentication, HostbasedAcceptedAlgorithms, HostbasedAuthentication, HostbasedUsesNameFromPacketOnly, IgnoreRhosts, Include, IPQoS, KbdInteractiveAuthentication, KerberosAuthentication, LogLevel, MaxAuthTries, MaxSessions, PasswordAuthentication, PermitEmptyPasswords, PermitListen, PermitOpen, PermitRootLogin, PermitTTY, PermitTunnel, PermitUserRC, PubkeyAcceptedAlgorithms, PubkeyAuthentication, PubkeyAuthOptions, RekeyLimit, RevokedKeys, RDomain, SetEnv, StreamLocalBindMask, StreamLocalBindUnlink, TrustedUserCAKeys, UnusedConnectionTimeout, X11DisplayOffset, X11Forwarding and X11UseLocalhost. MaxAuthTries Specifies the maximum number of authentication attempts permit- ted 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 shell, login or subsystem (e.g. sftp) sessions permitted per network connection. Multi- ple sessions may be established by clients that support connec- tion multiplexing. Setting MaxSessions to 1 will effectively disable session multiplexing, whereas setting it to 0 will pre- vent all shell, login and subsystem sessions while still per- mitting forwarding. 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 10:30:100. 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) unauthenticated connections. The probability increases lin- early and all connection attempts are refused if the number of unauthenticated connections reaches full (60). ModuliFile Specifies the moduli(5) file that contains the Diffie-Hellman groups used for the "diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha1" and "diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256" key exchange methods. The default is /etc/moduli. PasswordAuthentication Specifies whether password authentication is allowed. Note that passwords may also be accepted via KbdInteractiveAuthentication. See also UsePAM. The default is no. PermitEmptyPasswords When password authentication is allowed, it specifies whether the server allows login to accounts with empty password strings. The default is no. PermitListen Specifies the addresses/ports on which a remote TCP port for- warding may listen. The listen specification must be one of the following forms: PermitListen port PermitListen host:port Multiple permissions may be specified by separating them with whitespace. An argument of any can be used to remove all re- strictions and permit any listen requests. An argument of none can be used to prohibit all listen requests. The host name may contain wildcards as described in the PATTERNS section in ssh_config(5). The wildcard `*' can also be used in place of a port number to allow all ports. By default all port forwarding listen requests are permitted. Note that the GatewayPorts op- tion may further restrict which addresses may be listened on. Note also that ssh(1) will request a listen host of "localhost" if no listen host was specifically requested, and this name is treated differently to explicit localhost addresses of "127.0.0.1" and "::1". PermitOpen Specifies the destinations to which TCP port forwarding is per- mitted. The forwarding specification must be one of the fol- lowing forms: PermitOpen host:port PermitOpen IPv4_addr:port PermitOpen [IPv6_addr]:port Multiple forwards may be specified by separating them with whitespace. An argument of any can be used to remove all re- strictions and permit any forwarding requests. An argument of none can be used to prohibit all forwarding requests. The wildcard `*' can be used for host or port to allow all hosts or ports respectively. Otherwise, no pattern matching or address lookups are performed on supplied names. By default all port forwarding requests are permitted. PermitRootLogin Specifies whether root can log in using ssh(1). The argument must be yes, prohibit-password, forced-commands-only, or no. The default is no. Note that if ChallengeResponseAuthentication and UsePAM are both yes, this setting may be overridden by the PAM policy. If this option is set to prohibit-password (or its deprecated alias, without-password), password and keyboard-interactive au- thentication are 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 tak- ing 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. PermitTTY Specifies whether pty(4) allocation is permitted. The default is yes. PermitTunnel Specifies whether tun(4) device forwarding is allowed. The ar- gument 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. Independent of this setting, the permissions of the selected tun(4) device must allow access to the user. PermitUserEnvironment Specifies whether ~/.ssh/environment and environment= options in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys are processed by sshd(8). Valid op- tions are yes, no or a pattern-list specifying which environ- ment variable names to accept (for example "LANG,LC_*"). The default is no. Enabling environment processing may enable users to bypass access restrictions in some configurations us- ing mechanisms such as LD_PRELOAD. PermitUserRC Specifies whether any ~/.ssh/rc file is executed. The default is yes. PerSourceMaxStartups Specifies the number of unauthenticated connections allowed from a given source address, or "none" if there is no limit. This limit is applied in addition to MaxStartups, whichever is lower. The default is none. PerSourceNetBlockSize Specifies the number of bits of source address that are grouped together for the purposes of applying PerSourceMaxStartups lim- its. Values for IPv4 and optionally IPv6 may be specified, separated by a colon. The default is 32:128, which means each address is considered individually. PidFile Specifies the file that contains the process ID of the SSH dae- mon, or none to not write one. 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. PubkeyAcceptedAlgorithms Specifies the signature algorithms that will be accepted for public key authentication as a list of comma-separated pat- terns. Alternately if the specified list begins with a `+' character, then the specified algorithms will be appended to the default set instead of replacing them. If the specified list begins with a `-' character, then the specified algorithms (including wildcards) will be removed from the default set in- stead of replacing them. If the specified list begins with a `^' character, then the specified algorithms will be placed at the head of the default set. The default for this option is: ssh-ed25519-cert-v01@openssh.com, ecdsa-sha2-nistp256-cert-v01@openssh.com, ecdsa-sha2-nistp384-cert-v01@openssh.com, ecdsa-sha2-nistp521-cert-v01@openssh.com, sk-ssh-ed25519-cert-v01@openssh.com, sk-ecdsa-sha2-nistp256-cert-v01@openssh.com, rsa-sha2-512-cert-v01@openssh.com, rsa-sha2-256-cert-v01@openssh.com, ssh-ed25519, ecdsa-sha2-nistp256,ecdsa-sha2-nistp384,ecdsa-sha2-nistp521, sk-ssh-ed25519@openssh.com, sk-ecdsa-sha2-nistp256@openssh.com, rsa-sha2-512,rsa-sha2-256 The list of available signature algorithms may also be obtained using "ssh -Q PubkeyAcceptedAlgorithms". PubkeyAuthOptions Sets one or more public key authentication options. The sup- ported keywords are: none (the default; indicating no addi- tional options are enabled), touch-required and verify-required. The touch-required option causes public key authentication us- ing a FIDO authenticator algorithm (i.e. ecdsa-sk or ed25519-sk) to always require the signature to attest that a physically present user explicitly confirmed the authentication (usually by touching the authenticator). By default, sshd(8) requires user presence unless overridden with an autho- rized_keys option. The touch-required flag disables this over- ride. The verify-required option requires a FIDO key signature attest that the user was verified, e.g. via a PIN. Neither the touch-required or verify-required options have any effect for other, non-FIDO, public key types. PubkeyAuthentication Specifies whether public key authentication is allowed. The default is yes. RekeyLimit Specifies the maximum amount of data that may be transmitted or received before the session key is renegotiated, optionally followed by a maximum amount of time that may pass before the session key is renegotiated. The first argument is specified in bytes and may have a suffix of `K', `M', or `G' to indicate Kilobytes, Megabytes, or Gigabytes, respectively. The default is between `1G' and `4G', depending on the cipher. The op- tional second value is specified in seconds and may use any of the units documented in the "TIME FORMATS" section. The de- fault value for RekeyLimit is default none, which means that rekeying is performed after the cipher's default amount of data has been sent or received and no time based rekeying is done. RequiredRSASize Specifies the minimum RSA key size (in bits) that sshd(8) will accept. User and host-based authentication keys smaller than this limit will be refused. The default is 1024 bits. Note that this limit may only be raised from the default. RevokedKeys Specifies revoked public keys file, or none to not use one. Keys listed in this file will be refused for public key authen- tication. Note that if this file is not readable, then public key authentication will be refused for all users. Keys may be specified as a text file, listing one public key per line, or as an OpenSSH Key Revocation List (KRL) as generated by ssh-keygen(1). For more information on KRLs, see the KEY REVO- CATION LISTS section in ssh-keygen(1). RDomain Specifies an explicit routing domain that is applied after au- thentication has completed. The user session, as well as any forwarded or listening IP sockets, will be bound to this rdomain(4). If the routing domain is set to %D, then the do- main in which the incoming connection was received will be ap- plied. SecurityKeyProvider Specifies a path to a library that will be used when loading FIDO authenticator-hosted keys, overriding the default of using the built-in USB HID support. SetEnv Specifies one or more environment variables to set in child sessions started by sshd(8) as "NAME=VALUE". The environment value may be quoted (e.g. if it contains whitespace charac- ters). Environment variables set by SetEnv override the de- fault environment and any variables specified by the user via AcceptEnv or PermitUserEnvironment. StreamLocalBindMask Sets the octal file creation mode mask (umask) used when creat- ing a Unix-domain socket file for local or remote port forward- ing. This option is only used for port forwarding to a Unix- domain socket file. The default value is 0177, which creates a Unix-domain socket file that is readable and writable only by the owner. Note that not all operating systems honor the file mode on Unix-do- main socket files. StreamLocalBindUnlink Specifies whether to remove an existing Unix-domain socket file for local or remote port forwarding before creating a new one. If the socket file already exists and StreamLocalBindUnlink is not enabled, sshd will be unable to forward the port to the Unix-domain socket file. This option is only used for port forwarding to a Unix-domain socket file. The argument must be yes or no. The default is no. 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 acciden- tally leave their directory or files world-writable. The de- fault is yes. Note that this does not apply to ChrootDirectory, whose permissions and ownership are checked unconditionally. Subsystem Configures an external subsystem (e.g. file transfer daemon). Arguments should be a subsystem name and a command (with op- tional arguments) to execute upon subsystem request. The command sftp-server implements the SFTP file transfer sub- system. 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. SyslogFacility Gives the facility code that is used when logging messages from sshd(8). The possible values are: DAEMON, USER, AUTH, LOCAL0, LOCAL1, 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. How- ever, this means that connections will die if the route is down temporarily, and some people find it annoying. On the other hand, if TCP keepalives are not sent, sessions may hang indefi- nitely 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. TrustedUserCAKeys Specifies a file containing public keys of certificate authori- ties that are trusted to sign user certificates for authentica- tion, or none to not use one. Keys are listed one per line; empty lines and comments starting with `#' are allowed. If a certificate is presented for authentication and has its signing CA key listed in this file, then it may be used for authentica- tion for any user listed in the certificate's principals list. Note that certificates that lack a list of principals will not be permitted for authentication using TrustedUserCAKeys. For more details on certificates, see the CERTIFICATES section in ssh-keygen(1). UnusedConnectionTimeout Specifies whether and how quickly sshd(8) should close client connections with no open channels. Open channels include ac- tive shell, command execution or subsystem sessions, connected network, socket, agent or X11 forwardings. Forwarding listen- ers, such as those from the ssh(1) -R flag, are not considered as open channels and do not prevent the timeout. The timeout value is specified in seconds or may use any of the units docu- mented in the "TIME FORMATS" section. Note that this timeout starts when the client connection com- pletes user authentication but before the client has an oppor- tunity to open any channels. Caution should be used when using short timeout values, as they may not provide sufficient time for the client to request and open its channels before termi- nating the connection. The default none is to never expire connections for having no open channels. This option may be useful in conjunction with ChannelTimeout. UseBlacklist Specifies whether sshd(8) attempts to send authentication suc- cess and failure messages to the blacklistd(8) daemon. The de- fault is no. For forward compatibility with an upcoming blacklistd rename, the UseBlocklist alias can be used instead. UseDNS Specifies whether sshd(8) should look up the remote host name, and to check that the resolved host name for the remote IP ad- dress maps back to the very same IP address. If this option is set to no, then only addresses and not host names may be used in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys from and sshd_config Match Host directives. The default is "yes". UsePAM Enables the Pluggable Authentication Module interface. If set to yes this will enable PAM authentication using KbdInteractiveAuthentication and PasswordAuthentication in ad- dition to PAM account and session module processing for all au- thentication types. Because PAM keyboard-interactive authentication usually serves an equivalent role to password authentication, you should dis- able either PasswordAuthentication or KbdInteractiveAuthentication. If UsePAM is enabled, you will not be able to run sshd(8) as a non-root user. The default is yes. VersionAddendum Optionally specifies additional text to append to the SSH pro- tocol banner sent by the server upon connection. The default is "FreeBSD-20231004". The value none may be used to disable this. 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 expo- sure to the server and to client displays if the sshd(8) proxy display is configured to listen on the wildcard address (see X11UseLocalhost), though this is not the default. Addition- ally, the authentication spoofing and authentication data veri- fication and substitution occur on the client side. The secu- rity risk of using X11 forwarding is that the client's X11 dis- play server may be exposed to attack when the SSH client re- quests forwarding (see the warnings for ForwardX11 in ssh_config(5)). A system administrator may have a stance in which they want to protect 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. X11UseLocalhost Specifies whether sshd(8) should bind the X11 forwarding server to the loopback address or to the wildcard address. By de- fault, 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 wildcard address. The argument must be yes or no. The de- fault is yes. XAuthLocation Specifies the full pathname of the xauth(1) program, or none to not use one. The default is /usr/local/bin/xauth. TIME FORMATS sshd(8) command-line arguments and configuration file options that specify 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 following: <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) TOKENS Arguments to some keywords can make use of tokens, which are expanded at runtime: %% A literal `%'. %C Identifies the connection endpoints, containing four space- separated values: client address, client port number, server address, and server port number. %D The routing domain in which the incoming connection was re- ceived. %F The fingerprint of the CA key. %f The fingerprint of the key or certificate. %h The home directory of the user. %i The key ID in the certificate. %K The base64-encoded CA key. %k The base64-encoded key or certificate for authentication. %s The serial number of the certificate. %T The type of the CA key. %t The key or certificate type. %U The numeric user ID of the target user. %u The username. AuthorizedKeysCommand accepts the tokens %%, %C, %D, %f, %h, %k, %t, %U, and %u. AuthorizedKeysFile accepts the tokens %%, %h, %U, and %u. AuthorizedPrincipalsCommand accepts the tokens %%, %C, %D, %F, %f, %h, %i, %K, %k, %s, %T, %t, %U, and %u. AuthorizedPrincipalsFile accepts the tokens %%, %h, %U, and %u. ChrootDirectory accepts the tokens %%, %h, %U, and %u. RoutingDomain accepts the token %D. FILES /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. SEE ALSO sftp-server(8), sshd(8) AUTHORS 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 con- tributed support for privilege separation. FreeBSD 14.0 July 28, 2023 SSHD_CONFIG(5)
NAME | DESCRIPTION | TIME FORMATS | TOKENS | FILES | SEE ALSO | AUTHORS
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