error: fork: No such file or directory

[pvdhoef]

When trying to ssh to a machine with Win32-OpenSSH v0.0.5.0 installed I get:

ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host

And in logs\sshd:

2408 11:42:39 421 Server listening on :: port 22.
2408 11:42:39 421 Server listening on 0.0.0.0 port 22.
2408 11:42:39 421 error: Couldn't create pid file "./sshd.pid": Permission denied
2408 11:43:34 999 error: fork: No such file or directory

Tried to set r/w permissions on C:\Program Files\OpenSSH-Win64 for NT SERVICE\sshd but that didn't help.

After stopping the sshd service and starting it from the command line with sshd.exe -d I was able to ssh to the machine:

debug1: Bind to port 22 on ::.
Server listening on :: port 22.
debug1: socket:532, io:000001FC6FC8F970, fd:4
debug1: Bind to port 22 on 0.0.0.0.
Server listening on 0.0.0.0 port 22.
debug1: socket:536, io:000001FC6FC91100, fd:5
debug1: pipe - r-h:540,io:000001FC6FC42530,fd:6  w-h:544,io:000001FC6FC95500,fd:7
debug1: Server will not fork when running in debugging mode.
... etc

The message Server will not fork when running in debugging mode explains maybe why the error: fork: No such file or directory did not occur this time.

Workaround

As suggested by @manojampalam, this may have been caused by whitespace characters in the installation directory path.
When installed in C:\OpenSSH-Win64 (instead of C:\Program Files\OpenSSH-Win64) it is indeed possible to ssh to the machine again.

The message error: Couldn't create pid file "./sshd.pid": Permission denied still shows up in the log file but that appears to be rather harmless.

[manojampalam]

dup #493