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I believe this is an error. Every body is telling me that the ssh host key if deleted will be generated by reboot or restart sshd.

I have an ubuntu 9.10 machine (which run on Amazon EC2). This machine doesnot have sshd, just ssh. So, I delete all the key inside /etc/ssh with the thought that the key will be re-generated once I reboot the machine.

I'm not sure if it's correct, but if I reboot the machine, then the machine is no longer connectable via SSH.

Right after delete the keys, I try sudo service ssh reload. However, key is not generated. I have to regenerate it with ssh-keygen.

Would you guys please explain me why the key is not re-generated?

Phuong Nguyen
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1 Answers1

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The reason your ssh host keys aren't re-generated at restart is because they are not supposed to. If you look inside your /etc/init.d/ssh you will see that there are no ssh-keygen commands present.

andol
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  • I've observed twice now within a week or so the SSH key changing after a reboot. I even confirmed that something (apparently an AWS 'init' script) removed the SSH keys and then re-generated them after I rebooted (NOT stopped+restarted) an EC2 instance. [This answer](https://serverfault.com/a/1089348/40350) on a similar question contains the command I ran to confirm that. – Kenny Evitt Aug 30 '22 at 21:42