Hello, Thanks. The ssh issue has been solved.
"The same symptoms appear in an answer to https://superuser.com/questions/166359/why-is-my-ssh-login-slow which includes various solutions, some more permanent/apparently likely to help you than others. Just out of interest, is the su command (on the ssh server machine) also affected by authentication delays? This apparently suggests a PAM issue." In answer yes su on the ssh machine also has these delays. It is looking like a pam issue. "1. "I found that PAM was reading the file /var/log/btmp, which had become huge as a result of people trying to brute-force my server. This was leading to login times of a minute. Clearing this file solved the problem." I did check for /var/log/btmp and it is a nice lovely 25MB in size. I did clear it, restarted sshd and this did not clear up the problem, still had the delays. "2. "I noticed that when I change UsePAM yes to UsePAM no then this issue is resolved." BINGO! I flipped that UsePAM setting to no and the problem has gone away. Regarding the original issue of the systemd upgrade and the invalid attributes (this sshd was a nice side venture but wasn't sure if it was connected or not) here is the output that I've got: Setting up systemd (252.11-1~deb12u1) ... Installing new version of config file /etc/systemd/journald.conf ... Installing new version of config file /etc/systemd/logind.conf ... Installing new version of config file /etc/systemd/networkd.conf ... Installing new version of config file /etc/systemd/pstore.conf ... Installing new version of config file /etc/systemd/sleep.conf ... Installing new version of config file /etc/systemd/system.conf ... Installing new version of config file /etc/systemd/user.conf ... Cannot set file attributes for '/var/log/journal', maybe due to incompatibility in specified attributes, previous=0x00080000, current=0x00080000, expected=0x00880000, ignoring. Cannot set file attributes for '/var/log/journal/390b00d843d3401094a8fd44f1b7de82', maybe due to incompatibility in specified attributes, previous=0x00080000, current=0x00080000, expected=0x00880000, ignoring. Obsolete conffile /etc/systemd/resolved.conf has been modified by you. Saving as /etc/systemd/resolved.conf.dpkg-bak ... Thanks. Dave. On 7/15/23, Gareth Evans <donots...@fastmail.fm> wrote: > On Sat 15 Jul 2023, at 13:09, Gareth Evans <donots...@fastmail.fm> wrote: >> >> 2. "I noticed that when I change UsePAM yes to UsePAM no then this >> issue is resolved." >> >> There may be security (or other) issues with (2). > > See, for example: > > https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/673153/sshd-what-are-the-practical-effects-of-setting-usepam-no > >