Does restarting sshd always keep existing sessions alive?

Question

I booted a server and (too late) I discovered that some breaking change had been made to /etc/ssh/sshd.conf. Can I be reasonably sure that restarting sshd keeps existing connections ? (this was on solaris, but question also applies to ubuntu)

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 25 '09 at 16:06

5

You can be (reasonably) sure that your current connection will not break when you restart sshd. If you want to be on the safe side, simply send a SIGHUP to your running instance and it will re-read its configuration file.

answered Oct 25 '09 at 16:06

innaM

10,302

Indeed. Straight from the authoritative source sshd rereads its configuration file when it receives a hangup signal, SIGHUP. Tested with ` – Stéphane Gourichon Nov 21 '15 at 18:55
See also sshd -t Test mode. Only check the validity of the configuration file and sanity of the keys. This is useful for updating sshd reliably as configuration options may change. – Stéphane Gourichon Nov 21 '15 at 18:57

Does restarting sshd always keep existing sessions alive?

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