sshd leaking processes

[Damien Miller]

On Mon, 5 Mar 2007, Frederik Eaton wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I am experiencing a problem with
> 
> OpenSSH_4.3p2 Debian-8, OpenSSL 0.9.8c 05 Sep 2006
> 
> I have a tool which I use to generate command lines for end-end
> encryption through firewalls, following directions from an old
> discussion on this mailing list (thanks btw). It gives me something
> like this:
> 
> ssh -p 47774 localhost -o "ProxyCommand=ssh -v -v vds5.dedi.blackcatnetworks.co.uk -- 'nc localhost 47774'" -- 'echo hi'
> 
> When I run that, two sshd processes appear at the final destination
> host, and don't go away until I kill them.

It is normal to have two sshd processes when privilege separation is
enabled, but it is not normal for them to linger. How do they appear
in the output of a 'ps awwwwwx'?

> I am wondering if this problem is known to have been fixed in a recent
> version, or if I should download the latest version and try, or what.

It would be a good idea to try a recent release, or better yet, one of
the snapshots at http://www.mindrot.org/openssh_snap/ -- these are to
be openssh-4.6 very soon..

> The end of the output I see from the above command is (note this is
> verbose output from the ProxyCommand ssh, not the parent one):

If you can recreate the problem with a more recent version, a debug trace
from sshd would be more instructive than the output of the client.

-d