[ale] Stumbled Re: Simple steps

[John Mills]

Jim, ALErs -

OUCH!

On 17 Sep 2003, Jim Popovitch wrote:

> On Wed, 2003-09-17 at 11:04, John Mills wrote:
> 
> > 5. Now start the new animal:
> >  # cd /etc/rc.d/init.d
> >  # ./sshd stop
> >  # ./sshd start

I had a local login and didn't think about this. A (slightly) better idea
would have been:
 # ./sshd restart

BUT this assumes the new configuration _will_ run, else you're in the same
soup.

How do we do what we probably want?

1. Login to old 'sshd' (easy)
2. Ensure the new 'sshd' is viable, and only then install it (???)
3. Kill the old 'sshd', keeping our session alive (easy, I think)
4. Start the new 'sshd' and start a new session through it (easy, I think)
4b. If the new one isn't a "keeper", fix it from the old session (depends)
5. Kill the old session (easy)

What should step (2) be?

TIA.

> WARNING: "Danger Will Robinson!"
> 
> I did something similar to this on a remote box yesterday, not knowing
> that the sshd startup script had changed from "kill $PID" to "killall
> $SSHD".  The prior had previously killed just the server daemon, the
> later killed all running instances... including the one I was using at
> the time.  The end result is that I now have an orphaned box out there
> in the wild.  Looking on the bright side, it is no longer susceptible to
> openssh bugs.  ;)

I don't see this any differently if you update from an rpm.

 - John Mills
   john.m.mills at alum.mit.edu