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As have many, apparently, I struggle to find a forum to ask Cygwin questions. (Cygwin.com has a mailing list. How quaint.)

We have a number of Windows servers running cygwin sshd for administrative purposes. They all run as a domain account, let's call it my_domain\cyg_server.

Recently upper management required that we break out the account for development and production. So on the development machines, I have to change an existing sshd service from running as my_domain\cyg_server to my_domain\cyg_dev.

So, I've verified that my_domain\cyg_dev exists and belongs to the same A/D groups as cyg_server, and that I can log into the server as either cyg_server or cyg_dev.

I've added cyg_dev to the local administrator group.

I've changed the existing CYGWIN sshd service to run as cyg_dev.

With the service down, I've re-run ssh-host-config from a cygwin shell that was started with "Run as administrator". I answered "yes" to all questions.

I note that /etc/ssh* are now all owned by cyg_dev, as I would expect.

I started the service, and it started correctly, and runs as cyg_dev.

When I attempt to log into localhost as myself, I get:

/bin/bash: Operation not permitted

I can log in as my_domain\cyg_dev.

This is usually an indication that the account that sshd runs as, does not have admin privileges. But I confirm that my_domain\cyg_dev is in the administrators group.

I tried updating /etc/passwd with all domain accounts, and that didn't affect the problem.

I'm not sure what to try at this point. I've considered deleting /etc/ssh_host* and then running ssh-host-config again and hope the files are recreated. Is this worth trying, or will it make things worse?

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  • Ask the mailing list. I see no reason and utility for the change from cyg_server to cyg_dev . It an auxiliary user to separate the sshd service from the system one; no one is supposed to log in a shell from it.
    – matzeri
    Feb 4, 2018 at 11:03
  • I see no utility in making the change either, but nevertheless we are required to do so. We have spent a lot of time and effort arguing that position to no avail.
    – roc97007
    Mar 22, 2018 at 1:23
  • cyg_server is just a default name. You can config sshd and when the configure script suggests to use cyg_server just change to cyg_dev.
    – matzeri
    Mar 22, 2018 at 2:46

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