In our environment, we generate an RSA host key in /var/lib/dropbear and start the dropbear service with the following command:
/usr/sbin/dropbear -i -r /var/lib/dropbear/dropbear_rsa_host_key -B We are getting the following Warning messages: Feb 20 06:08:50 witherspoon dropbear[1406]: Failed loading /etc/dropbear/dropbear_rsa_host_key Feb 20 06:08:50 witherspoon dropbear[1406]: Failed loading /etc/dropbear/dropbear_dss_host_key Feb 20 06:08:50 witherspoon dropbear[1406]: Failed loading /etc/dropbear/dropbear_ecdsa_host_key This is because in our environment, we don't generate the 3 types of host keys in /etc/dropbear. Dropbear will first load the host key specified by the -r option and then will also try to load all 3 types of host keys from the default path /etc/dropbear. We propose the following patch be made to dropbear svr-runopts.c such that dropbear will only load the host keys from the default /etc/dropbear path if a key is not specified by the -r option. >From b2048847702e00df8d404896323857f89cda215e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: CamVan Nguyen <ctngu...@us.ibm.com> Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2018 15:34:00 -0600 Subject: [PATCH 1/1] Only load dropbear default host keys if a key is not specified --- svr-runopts.c | 9 ++++++--- 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/svr-runopts.c b/svr-runopts.c index 3d97023..38a1b75 100644 --- a/svr-runopts.c +++ b/svr-runopts.c @@ -510,17 +510,20 @@ void load_all_hostkeys() { m_free(hostkey_file); } + /* Only load default host keys if a host key is not specified by the user */ + if (0 == svr_opts.num_hostkey_files) { #if DROPBEAR_RSA - loadhostkey(RSA_PRIV_FILENAME, 0); + loadhostkey(RSA_PRIV_FILENAME, 0); #endif #if DROPBEAR_DSS - loadhostkey(DSS_PRIV_FILENAME, 0); + loadhostkey(DSS_PRIV_FILENAME, 0); #endif #if DROPBEAR_ECDSA - loadhostkey(ECDSA_PRIV_FILENAME, 0); + loadhostkey(ECDSA_PRIV_FILENAME, 0); #endif + } #if DROPBEAR_DELAY_HOSTKEY if (svr_opts.delay_hostkey) { -- 1.8.2.2 Thanks, CamVan Nguyen POWER Firmware Tools Development & Support, STG 512-286-7756 T/L: 363-7756