question

[voltaic]

according to the openssh mailing list page, this is the spot to
report/discuss bugs and i have a potential one.  on the other hand, it is
probably something i am not doing correctly.

the system is red hat linux 6.2 (yuk) running the openssh rpm i grabbed off
of the portable openssh site listing, with sshd version OpenSSH_2.9p2 

i have it installed via rpm and when i go to launch sshd it gives me this
error:

Could not load host key: /etc/ssh/ssh_host_key
Could not load host key: /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key
Could not load host key: /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key
Disabling protocol version 1. Could not load host key
Disabling protocol version 2. Could not load host key
sshd: no hostkeys available -- exiting.

the "issue" is that those files are there.  peep the listing:

[root at nbws1 ssh]# pwd
/etc/ssh
[root at nbws1 ssh]# ls -al
total 68
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         4096 Sep 25 16:33 .
drwxr-xr-x   30 root     root         4096 Sep 25 15:52 ..
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        26287 Jun 16 21:51 primes
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root         1050 Jun 16 21:51 ssh_config
-rw-------    1 root     root          736 Sep 25 16:08 ssh_host_dsa_key
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          600 Sep 25 16:08 ssh_host_dsa_key.pub
-rw-------    1 root     root          525 Sep 25 16:06 ssh_host_key
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          329 Sep 25 16:06 ssh_host_key.pub
-rw-------    1 root     root          951 Sep 25 16:07 ssh_host_rsa_key
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          220 Sep 25 16:07 ssh_host_rsa_key.pub
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root         1780 Sep 25 16:50 sshd_config
[root at nbws1 ssh]# 

all of the host key files were generated as recommended on the openssh
portable "how to install" web page, which shows this:

ssh-keygen -t rsa1 -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_key -N ""
ssh-keygen -t rsa -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key -N ""
ssh-keygen -t dsa -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key -N ""

the only things i did differently are that i inserted passphrases in the
above ssh-keygen command lines (between the quotes) and that i edited the
sshd_config file to change PermitRootLogin to no.

ssh client is fine.  sshd finds the keys if i set them world readable but
(as it should) declines to use them.  so the files are definitely there.

what is wrong with my setup?  why won't sshd find those keys?

the only thing i can think is that sshd doesn't want to run as root (i am
launching it from the cli as root) and then it can't read those files.  in
this case, what is the user that sshd tries to launch as?  i cannot find the
user name in any documentation.