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Bug 1325535 - rewrite sshd-keygen from init.d to systemd service (per key type)
Summary: rewrite sshd-keygen from init.d to systemd service (per key type)
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED ERRATA
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: openssh
Version: rawhide
Hardware: Unspecified
OS: Unspecified
unspecified
unspecified
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Jakub Jelen
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2016-04-09 19:04 UTC by Jakub Jelen
Modified: 2016-04-18 17:24 UTC (History)
12 users (show)

Fixed In Version: openssh-7.2p2-4.fc24
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of: 1317722
Environment:
Last Closed: 2016-04-18 17:24:27 UTC
Type: Bug
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description Jakub Jelen 2016-04-09 19:04:13 UTC
Moving to the new bug to keep the track of this future change.

+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #1317722 +++

Petr had idea about rewriting the old "initd bash" sshd-keygen into systemd service (thanks!). I made an attempt to do that, but there are few changes/difficulties:

 * Missing possibility to re-generate the keys using manual invocation. When the original script was invoked before, it removes potentially existing keys before generating new ones. But it was not possible since using systemd as entrypoint (it started only if some of the keys were not in place) and it is ok, probably.

 * Dropping  AUTOCREATE_SERVER_KEYS  variable from  /etc/sysconfig/sshd  and leaving the preference of keys creation only on the systemd  Wants=  directive in  sshd.service  or on symlinks. Enable a key using:

        systemctl enable sshd-config

 * Dropping support for RSA1 key (SSH1), which is gone for good now in Fedora.

 * I was not able to cover condition for FIPS (to exclude ed25519, dsa keys).

Service snippets below. Tested on my box and it seems to work fine, except the ugly listing of status.

Comments are welcomed. Especially from somebody more close to systemd. What do you think?


$ cat sshd-keygen@.service
[Unit]
Description=OpenSSH %i Server Key Generation
ConditionFileNotEmpty=!/etc/ssh/ssh_host_%i_key
PartOf=sshd.service sshd.socket
Before=sshd.service sshd.socket

[Service]
EnvironmentFile=-/etc/sysconfig/sshd
ExecStart=/usr/bin/ssh-keygen -q -t %i -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_%i_key -C '' -N ''
ExecStartPost=/usr/bin/chgrp ssh_keys /etc/ssh/ssh_host_%i_key
ExecStartPost=/usr/bin/chmod 640 /etc/ssh/ssh_host_%i_key
ExecStartPost=/usr/bin/chmod 644 /etc/ssh/ssh_host_%i_key.pub
ExecStartPost=-/usr/sbin/restorecon /etc/ssh/ssh_host_%i_key{,.pub}
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes


$ cat sshd.service
[Unit]
Description=OpenSSH server daemon
Documentation=man:sshd(8) man:sshd_config(5)
After=network.target sshd-keygen.service
Wants=sshd-keygen
Wants=sshd-keygen
Wants=sshd-keygen
[...]

# or the  Wants=  should probably be rather specified as symlinks from  .wants  directory.

--- Additional comment from Yu Watanabe on 2016-03-17 06:07:47 CET ---

I notice that anaconda also uses the script.

https://github.com/rhinstaller/anaconda/blob/master/data/systemd/anaconda-sshd.service

--- Additional comment from Yu Watanabe on 2016-03-17 06:52 CET ---

To simplify [Service] section of proposed sshd-keygen@.service, I've tried to write a script. The merits of using the script are
* The script covers FIPS.
* If the system does not have policycoreutils package, 
  which contains restorecon command, systemd does not output error message.

If the attached script is accepted, the unit becomes as follows.

$ cat sshd-keygen@.service
[Unit]
Description=OpenSSH %i Server Key Generation
ConditionFileNotEmpty=!/etc/ssh/ssh_host_%i_key
PartOf=sshd.service sshd.socket
Before=sshd.service sshd.socket

[Service]
EnvironmentFile=-/etc/sysconfig/sshd
ExecStart=/usr/bin/ssh-keygen-new %i
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes

--- Additional comment from Jakub Jelen on 2016-03-31 13:38:08 CEST ---

Yes. It makes sense on the first sight, but on the other, we will get back where we are now (bash script), but certainly with more flexibility than before (which is also pain in RHEL7 now -- private bug #1228088).

If the systemd guys will not have any complains, I will try to push it forward, but it will certainly need some documentation and guide, since it might not be so obvious.

Comment 1 Lukáš Nykrýn 2016-04-11 09:48:44 UTC
Why do you have the PartOf dependency there? It looks weird for the oneshot units.

Comment 2 Jakub Jelen 2016-04-11 14:21:44 UTC
(In reply to Lukáš Nykrýn from comment #1)
> Why do you have the PartOf dependency there? It looks weird for the oneshot
> units.

Yes, it does not have to be there. It was part of the old service (and actually still is) and I didn't study if we should remove that. Thanks for comment. Noted.

Comment 3 Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek 2016-04-11 14:56:47 UTC
See https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Initial_Service_Setup. You should try to align your unit as much as possible with guidelines there: e.g. RemainAfterExit=no.

You must remove Before=sshd.socket.

How exactly is the ssh-keygen@.service installed? Does sshd.service has Wants=ssh-keygen or similar?

Comment 4 Michal Sekletar 2016-04-11 15:16:33 UTC
(In reply to Jakub Jelen from comment #0)

> ExecStartPost=-/usr/sbin/restorecon /etc/ssh/ssh_host_%i_key{,.pub}

IIRC, such shell expansions ({}) are not supported. Rewrite this as two ExecStartPost lines or wrap this by invocation of /bin/bash -c "...".

Comment 5 Jakub Jelen 2016-04-11 15:19:08 UTC
(In reply to Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek from comment #3)
> See https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Initial_Service_Setup. You
> should try to align your unit as much as possible with guidelines there:
> e.g. RemainAfterExit=no.

It is not from our heads (bug #1066615, comment #6):

> 5) I talked to lnykryn about sshd@.service dependency on
> sshd-keygen.service. It depends on whether you want the key generation to
> happen at boot time, in which case it belongs instead to sshd.socket, or you
> actually want it to happen for the first client connected, in which case the
> dependency is correct and RemainAfterExit ensures it's only called once

But I am ok with removing that. We should probably remove this line. It does not have any reasonable effect in this case (as far as I understand that, or does it?).


> You must remove Before=sshd.socket.

Why? Wouldn't it happen if we would not generate the keys and create socket activation, that the sshd-keygen service would not start?


> How exactly is the ssh-keygen@.service installed? Does sshd.service has
> Wants=ssh-keygen or similar?

Yes, as mentioned in the description above.

Thank you for the comments and the link. But it is only one use case, to generate the keys during first boot. You can also use the service to regenerate them or change the subset of the keys that you want to auto-create. At least it historically was, configurable by AUTOCREATE_SERVER_KEYS variable and now I can think that dependency can be handled by Wants= somehow.

Comment 6 Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek 2016-04-11 15:42:39 UTC
(In reply to Jakub Jelen from comment #5)
> (In reply to Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek from comment #3)
> > See https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Initial_Service_Setup. You
> > should try to align your unit as much as possible with guidelines there:
> > e.g. RemainAfterExit=no.
> 
> It is not from our heads (bug #1066615, comment #6):
>
> > 5) I talked to lnykryn about sshd@.service dependency on
> > sshd-keygen.service. It depends on whether you want the key generation to
> > happen at boot time, in which case it belongs instead to sshd.socket, or you
> > actually want it to happen for the first client connected, in which case the
> > dependency is correct and RemainAfterExit ensures it's only called once
> 
> But I am ok with removing that. We should probably remove this line. It does
> not have any reasonable effect in this case (as far as I understand that, or
> does it?).

You have Condition...= which means that the unit will not be started again if it run successfully before. So RemainAfterExit=yes is redundant.
Also removing it allows you to remove the keys, and simply restart sshd.service, to have them regenerated. Maybe a bit of a corner case, but just makes things minimally more robust.

> > You must remove Before=sshd.socket.
> 
> Why? Wouldn't it happen if we would not generate the keys and create socket
> activation, that the sshd-keygen service would not start?

OK, "must" is too strong. I should have said "should".

As you say below, ssh-keygen@ services are pulled in the the service unit, and the service unit, not the socket unit, actually uses the keys. sockets.target is started early in boot. Things would work even with the dependency, but it's better to avoid pushing things into early boot. Especially that generating the key can be pretty costly, and uses entropy, and for many machines they keys might not be ever used.

> > How exactly is the ssh-keygen@.service installed? Does sshd.service has
> > Wants=ssh-keygen or similar?
> 
> Yes, as mentioned in the description above.
OK.

> Thank you for the comments and the link. But it is only one use case, to
> generate the keys during first boot. You can also use the service to
> regenerate them or change the subset of the keys that you want to
> auto-create. At least it historically was, configurable by
> AUTOCREATE_SERVER_KEYS variable and now I can think that dependency can be
> handled by Wants= somehow.

There's always the possibility of masking the ssh-keygen@.service as a way of disabling it. I think that's reasonable replacement for AUTOCREATE_SERVER_KEYS=no variable.

Comment 7 Jakub Jelen 2016-04-12 10:50:43 UTC
(In reply to Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek from comment #6)
> As you say below, ssh-keygen@ services are pulled in the the service unit,
> and the service unit, not the socket unit, actually uses the keys.
> sockets.target is started early in boot. Things would work even with the
> dependency, but it's better to avoid pushing things into early boot.
> Especially that generating the key can be pretty costly, and uses entropy,
> and for many machines they keys might not be ever used.

Thanks for comments. It makes sense. Removed

About the renaming according to the guidelines, I am afraid sshd-keygen is somehow established term (it will probably live all the way through RHEL7 at least), so renaming to  sshd-init  would probably cause more trouble than help.

> If it needs to run multiple commands, it is recommended to create a script file in the package's /usr/libexec/<packagename> directory and execute that.

This is probably applicable to our case. Having 5 ExecStartPost commands is "multiple" and we should use bash script again (also to cover FIPS).

My basic testing went well so far. Since we iterated to some usable version, is it too late to push it to Fedora 24 Beta to make sure it is tested well and documented?

Current version looks like this:
 * we still need EnvirnmentFile for  SSH_USE_STRONG_RNG  (does systemd pass environment variables?)
 * RemainAfterExit=no  is default, so omitting should be ok

[Unit]
Description=OpenSSH %i Server Key Generation
ConditionFileNotEmpty=|!/etc/ssh/ssh_host_%i_key
Before=sshd.service

[Service]
Type=oneshot
EnvironmentFile=-/etc/sysconfig/sshd
ExecStart=/usr/libexec/openssh/sshd-keygen.sh %i


Bash script:
 * based on the proposed version by Yu Watanabe in bug #1317722
 * drops support for RSA1 keys
 * support for FIPS works
 * moved to appropriate folder

#!/bin/bash

# Create the host keys for the OpenSSH server.
KEYTYPE=$1
case $KEYTYPE in
	"dsa") ;& # disabled in FIPS
	"ed25519")
		FIPS=/proc/sys/crypto/fips_enabled
		if [[ -r "$FIPS" && $(cat $FIPS) == "1" ]]; then
			exit 0
		fi ;;
	"rsa") ;; # always ok
	"ecdsa") ;;
	*) # wrong argument
		exit 12 ;;
esac

KEYGEN=/usr/bin/ssh-keygen
KEY=/etc/ssh/ssh_host_${KEYTYPE}_key

if [[ ! -x $KEYGEN ]]; then
	exit 13
fi

# remove old keys
rm -f $RSA_KEY{,.pub}

# create new keys
if ! $KEYGEN -q -t $KEYTYPE -f $KEY -C '' -N '' >&/dev/null; then
	exit 1
fi

# sanitize permissions
/usr/bin/chgrp ssh_keys $KEY
/usr/bin/chmod 640 $KEY
/usr/bin/chmod 644 $KEY.pub
if [[ -x /usr/sbin/restorecon ]]; then
	/usr/sbin/restorecon $KEY{,.pub}
fi

exit 0

Comment 8 Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek 2016-04-12 12:06:26 UTC
(In reply to Jakub Jelen from comment #7)
> About the renaming according to the guidelines, I am afraid sshd-keygen is
> somehow established term (it will probably live all the way through RHEL7 at
> least), so renaming to  sshd-init  would probably cause more trouble than
> help.
+1 on keeping the old name.

> My basic testing went well so far. Since we iterated to some usable version,
> is it too late to push it to Fedora 24 Beta to make sure it is tested well
> and documented?
The updated policies specify that "breaking changes" and incompatible upgrades
should be avoid. This change will be pretty much invisible to installed
systems so I think it's totally fine to push it.

> Current version looks like this:
>  * we still need EnvirnmentFile for  SSH_USE_STRONG_RNG  (does systemd pass
> environment variables?)
It does.

But shouldn't SSH_USE_STRONG_RNG be always used? Most people will not
know about the config file, and anyway those keys will be generated before
first login, so the default is what pretty much anyone will use.
I don't think you'd ever want to run that key generation with
SSH_USE_STRONG_RNG=0.

The warning in the man page is wrong for Linux, and a hardware random
generator is not necessary to use /dev/random, the kernel replenishes
the pool based on hardware events. Seeding the generation of ssh keys
is the type of activity that /dev/random is there for. For a majority
of machines the keys will be generated without issue. In case of poor
entropy-deprived systems the generation will be slowed until the
entropy is acquired, but it's a one-off event, so waiting a bit is OK.

(I tried to measure how much the entropy pool is depleted when
generating a rsa on my laptop by watching
/proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail. It seems completely negligible,
and sometimes entropy goes *up* after generating a key. I suppose
this is an effect of me typing on the keyboard and disk access, etc.
This is on an old laptop with no rng.)

> [Unit]
...
> Bash script:
...

Looks good to me.

Comment 9 Stephen Gallagher 2016-04-13 19:42:14 UTC
(In reply to Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek from comment #8)
> (In reply to Jakub Jelen from comment #7)
> > About the renaming according to the guidelines, I am afraid sshd-keygen is
> > somehow established term (it will probably live all the way through RHEL7 at
> > least), so renaming to  sshd-init  would probably cause more trouble than
> > help.
> +1 on keeping the old name.
> 
> > My basic testing went well so far. Since we iterated to some usable version,
> > is it too late to push it to Fedora 24 Beta to make sure it is tested well
> > and documented?
> The updated policies specify that "breaking changes" and incompatible
> upgrades
> should be avoid. This change will be pretty much invisible to installed
> systems so I think it's totally fine to push it.
> 
> > Current version looks like this:
> >  * we still need EnvirnmentFile for  SSH_USE_STRONG_RNG  (does systemd pass
> > environment variables?)
> It does.
> 
> But shouldn't SSH_USE_STRONG_RNG be always used? Most people will not
> know about the config file, and anyway those keys will be generated before
> first login, so the default is what pretty much anyone will use.
> I don't think you'd ever want to run that key generation with
> SSH_USE_STRONG_RNG=0.
> 
> The warning in the man page is wrong for Linux, and a hardware random
> generator is not necessary to use /dev/random, the kernel replenishes
> the pool based on hardware events. Seeding the generation of ssh keys
> is the type of activity that /dev/random is there for. For a majority
> of machines the keys will be generated without issue. In case of poor
> entropy-deprived systems the generation will be slowed until the
> entropy is acquired, but it's a one-off event, so waiting a bit is OK.
> 
> (I tried to measure how much the entropy pool is depleted when
> generating a rsa on my laptop by watching
> /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail. It seems completely negligible,
> and sometimes entropy goes *up* after generating a key. I suppose
> this is an effect of me typing on the keyboard and disk access, etc.
> This is on an old laptop with no rng.)


Yeah, measuring that from an interactive session is basically impossible, since even the *lack* of input can affect entropy. (If a live session exists, even the amount of "dead-air" can create entropy).

However, if this is being generated on first boot in a VM, there may still be issues. The best solution for this is to boot VMs with the virtio-rng device enabled (which will feed the entropy pool from the hypervisor's /dev/random, which in turn is getting entropy from the activity of all the VMs running on it).

However, if you read through https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1212082#c11 and onwards, it seems that it should be perfectly safe for us to read from /dev/urandom (not the 'u') here, since the initscripts package is writing the random seed file during installation (with entropy generated during that process).

Comment 10 Jakub Jelen 2016-04-15 12:32:14 UTC
One more note:

 * sshd@.service  should also  Wants=sshd-keygen@{keys}.service, which makes it less "state-of-art", because we again duplicate configuration for two use cases, which might be again confusing


Is there any way to make both services (sshd and sshd@) want sshd-keygen without duplication? I was thinking about adding another intermediate "dummy" dependency (sshd-keygen.service ?), which would depend on the instantiated ones:

    sshd.service      sshd@.service
              \       /
       Wants=  \     / Wants=
       Before=  \   /  Before=
                 \ /
            sshd-keygen.service (?)
            /        |        \
           /         |         \ Wants=
          /   Wants= |          \
  Wants= /           |          sshd-keygen
        /            |
       /            sshd-keygen
      /
    sshd-keygen
        
Would it work this way and is it advisable? Is there any convention to name such dummy service without Exec? Is it even service?

Comment 11 Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek 2016-04-15 12:50:15 UTC
sshd-keygen.target would be the right unit type.

By default .services which are part of a target have an automatically added Before= dependency, so
# sshd-keygen@.service
...
[Install]
WantedBy=sshd-keygen.target

and

# sshd.service and sshd@.service
[Unit]
Wants=sshd-keygen.target
After=sshd-keygen.target
...

Comment 12 Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek 2016-04-15 13:52:55 UTC
(In reply to Stephen Gallagher from comment #9)
> However, if you read through
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1212082#c11 and onwards, it
> seems that it should be perfectly safe for us to read from /dev/urandom (not
> the 'u') here

OK. Thank you for the link. I change my comment about SSH_USE_STRONG_RNG: it seems that the opposite should be done: simply remove the configurability from the sshd-keygen scripts, and always use /dev/urandom. This removes the need for the sysconfig file and makes the user interface simpler. If somebody want to generate the key in a special way, they can always do that by calling the right commands manually.

> since the initscripts package is writing the random seed file
> during installation (with entropy generated during that process).

I don't think the initscripts package does that anymore, systemd-random-seed.service does.

Comment 13 Jakub Jelen 2016-04-15 14:23:15 UTC
Thanks for comments. I tested it briefly once more and it seems to be quite working, except the use case, when I remove the keys and restart sshd.service. In this case, sshd-keygen.target does not restart the "children" and server starts without keys, which is not cool.

This seems that was solved by the  PartOf=  option in the old  sshd-keygen, isn't it? Does it sound reasonable Lukas?

# sshd-keygen.target
PartOf=sshd.service

to make sure that restart of sshd will check for existence of keys and generate missing.


About the socket activation, it works somehow. Sequence
 * disable & stop sshd.service
 * enable & start sshd.socket
 * remove keys
 * connect
works even without  PartOf=sshd.socket  dependency, even though the target is left active.


(In reply to Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek from comment #12)
> (In reply to Stephen Gallagher from comment #9)
> > However, if you read through
> > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1212082#c11 and onwards, it
> > seems that it should be perfectly safe for us to read from /dev/urandom (not
> > the 'u') here
> 
> OK. Thank you for the link. I change my comment about SSH_USE_STRONG_RNG: it
> seems that the opposite should be done: simply remove the configurability
> from the sshd-keygen scripts, and always use /dev/urandom. This removes the
> need for the sysconfig file and makes the user interface simpler. If
> somebody want to generate the key in a special way, they can always do that
> by calling the right commands manually.

Actually, the  /etc/sysconfig/sshd  file is not used only for key generation (sshd-keygen), but also for service itself, which makes the  sshd  use strong random number generator for session keys and others. This is not common use case for personal laptop, but might be requirement in RHEL deployment.

Comment 14 Jakub Jelen 2016-04-15 15:58:44 UTC
Adding scratch build for Fedora 23 [1] (tested, based on the above comments) and sending Rawhide build [2].

[1] http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/taskinfo?taskID=13671328
[2] http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/taskinfo?taskID=13672102

Comment 15 Fedora Update System 2016-04-15 16:47:42 UTC
openssh-7.2p2-4.fc24 has been submitted as an update to Fedora 24. https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2016-965bd6926e

Comment 16 Colin Walters 2016-04-15 20:20:00 UTC
Just for reference, I will have to change
https://github.com/cgwalters/ansible-personal/blob/master/cloud-init/user-data.secure#L20
to *also* disable the relevant services, right?

It's okay, but so far no one seems to have linked any real world users of AUTOCREATE_SERVER_KEYS, so now there's one here.

Also worth noting the architecture which sets it via cloud-init's boothook.  Should still be fine as that happens before sshd.

Comment 17 Fedora Update System 2016-04-15 23:21:07 UTC
openssh-7.2p2-4.fc24 has been pushed to the Fedora 24 testing repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
See https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA:Updates_Testing for
instructions on how to install test updates.
You can provide feedback for this update here: https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2016-965bd6926e

Comment 18 Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek 2016-04-16 01:45:05 UTC
I don't think you need to disable the services. If can generate the key, and you can just not use it.

Comment 19 Jakub Jelen 2016-04-17 08:59:39 UTC
(In reply to Colin Walters from comment #16)
> Just for reference, I will have to change
> https://github.com/cgwalters/ansible-personal/blob/master/cloud-init/user-
> data.secure#L20
> to *also* disable the relevant services, right?

One (the most correct) way would be to disable autocreation of rsa and ecdsa keys:

  systemctl mask sshd-keygen@rsa
  systemctl mask sshd-keygen@ecsa

(disable does not work in this configuration, when we have Wants= in sshd-keygen.target. Any thoughts from systemd guys?)

The other would be to create all of them and use just ed25519 keys by modifying  sshd_config option

    HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key


> It's okay, but so far no one seems to have linked any real world users of
> AUTOCREATE_SERVER_KEYS, so now there's one here.

Thanks for mentioning it.

Comment 20 Stephen Gallagher 2016-04-18 12:30:53 UTC
(In reply to Jakub Jelen from comment #19)
> (In reply to Colin Walters from comment #16)
> > Just for reference, I will have to change
> > https://github.com/cgwalters/ansible-personal/blob/master/cloud-init/user-
> > data.secure#L20
> > to *also* disable the relevant services, right?
> 
> One (the most correct) way would be to disable autocreation of rsa and ecdsa
> keys:
> 
>   systemctl mask sshd-keygen@rsa
>   systemctl mask sshd-keygen@ecsa
> 
> (disable does not work in this configuration, when we have Wants= in
> sshd-keygen.target. Any thoughts from systemd guys?)
> 

That's exactly as designed. "Disabled" means that the default target (usually either multi-user.target or graphical.target) doesn't try to auto-start it directly, but it can be pulled in as a dependency of another unit. "Masked" means that it never gets started at all under any circumstances.


All that said, the simpler approach is to do what is specified in https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Initial_Service_Setup which is to just have the service use ConditionPathExists to skip running if a key already exists (which may have been added manually or via previous autogeneration).

Comment 21 Jakub Jelen 2016-04-18 12:46:25 UTC
(In reply to Stephen Gallagher from comment #20)
> That's exactly as designed. "Disabled" means that the default target
> (usually either multi-user.target or graphical.target) doesn't try to
> auto-start it directly, but it can be pulled in as a dependency of another
> unit. "Masked" means that it never gets started at all under any
> circumstances.

Thanks. It makes sense.

> All that said, the simpler approach is to do what is specified in
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Initial_Service_Setup which is to
> just have the service use ConditionPathExists to skip running if a key
> already exists (which may have been added manually or via previous
> autogeneration).

But it is not the problem here. Condition is in place and working fine. The discussed case is now  when user does not want to generate some keys even if they are not there. But the mask option sounds reasonable and is probably right way to go also for further documentation.

Comment 22 Stephen Gallagher 2016-04-18 13:05:32 UTC
(In reply to Jakub Jelen from comment #21)
> But it is not the problem here. Condition is in place and working fine. The
> discussed case is now  when user does not want to generate some keys even if
> they are not there. But the mask option sounds reasonable and is probably
> right way to go also for further documentation.


Sorry, I misunderstood. I'm not sure if that's the right approach necessarily, though. If they don't want to use the keys, it seems to me like that should be a decision is best made by the user in the sshd_config file. Basing whether to use the key upon whether it exists is error-prone: if it suddenly got created it would cause an unexpected behavior change.

Comment 23 Jakub Jelen 2016-04-18 15:14:30 UTC
(In reply to Stephen Gallagher from comment #22)
> Sorry, I misunderstood. I'm not sure if that's the right approach
> necessarily, though. If they don't want to use the keys, it seems to me like
> that should be a decision is best made by the user in the sshd_config file.
> Basing whether to use the key upon whether it exists is error-prone: if it
> suddenly got created it would cause an unexpected behavior change.

No no no. The default  sshd_config  of course contains the list of keys that should be used:

  HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key
  #HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key
  HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ecdsa_key
  HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key


By commenting out, removing or adding a new one, you define what keys are used. 

The sshd-keygen is different mechanism, which is completely unrelated to the list of keys actually used. I tried to explain in the mail on devel@[1], but maybe it was not clear. This bugzilla is only about sshd-keygen service and about key creation during first boot or when administrator decides to rotate the keys.

[1] https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/RAVATCRUEWV7FX56Z2BV32RWPTT2YGAO/#2AHH4AFYYDWPE6SUG3ZCQJKNAXNUWDT7

Comment 24 Fedora Update System 2016-04-18 17:24:19 UTC
openssh-7.2p2-4.fc24 has been pushed to the Fedora 24 stable repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.


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