Verify sshd Running After Install

Verify sshd Running After Install | Generated by AI

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Question: How to verify sshd is running after installing OpenSSH server?

Answer:

On Ubuntu/Debian, check the SSH service status:

sudo systemctl status ssh

Expected output:

● ssh.service - OpenBSD Secure Shell server
     Loaded: loaded
     Active: active (running)

For a quick check:

systemctl is-active ssh

Output:

active

Check whether sshd is listening on a port:

sudo ss -tlnp | grep ssh

Example:

LISTEN 0 128 0.0.0.0:22 0.0.0.0:* users:(("sshd",pid=1234,fd=3))
LISTEN 0 128 [::]:22    [::]:*    users:(("sshd",pid=1234,fd=4))

This means SSH daemon is accepting connections on port 22.

Check the process directly:

ps aux | grep sshd

Example:

root  1234  0.0  sshd: /usr/sbin/sshd -D

If you manually created /run/sshd and ran which sshd, you only verified the binary exists:

which sshd
# /usr/sbin/sshd

You still need to start the daemon:

sudo systemctl start ssh

Enable on boot:

sudo systemctl enable ssh

For a container/cloud VM environment (common for GPU instances), systemctl may not exist. Use:

sudo /usr/sbin/sshd -t   # validate config
sudo /usr/sbin/sshd      # start sshd

Then:

ps aux | grep sshd
ss -tlnp | grep :22

To test from another machine:

ssh username@server_ip

or:

ssh -v username@server_ip

-v shows the connection handshake and is usually the fastest way to debug SSH issues.

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