After Security Update today: "Bus error" when starting "ssh" client

I'd rather not detail the process - if you should know, you'd already know. It involved copying the old file to a backup and then replacing it with one from a TimeMachine backup, but it needs to be done as root, and will need to be reversed again once Apple releases a fix (hence my hesitation).

Why would it need to be reversed once Apple releases a fix? That fix would just overwrite the ssh binary again, wouldn't it?

I second those permissions on ~/.ssh and ~/.ssh/*. Although, it's quite possible that sabrom was talking about the ssh related files in /etc.

Ok...this is definitely not best practice but as I literally can't work without ssh (and MindTerm just feels really clunky) I've found a functional workaround for now. Basically ssh seems work fine when run as root (not sudo but really root).

-enable root if you haven't already
-in Terminal "sudo su -" to become root with root's environment -- you'll have to put in your users password of course (and have to be an admin as well to use that password for sudo)
-as root, if you need any bash shortcuts just "ln -s /Users/<username>/.profile .profile" (replace <username> with your actual username....this is just making a symlink in case you're not sure)
-as root, if you need your ssh private key/known public keys (as I'm guessing most do), then "ln -s /Users/<username>/.ssh .ssh"
-Log out from root and then log back in so bash rereads those files

You're now good to go (or at least I am 🙂 ).

I won't be doing anything else in the shell as root but running ssh so hopefully won't do anything too stupid.

Message was edited by: Andrew and Jamie Miller

Sorry - yes, I was just talking about the ones in /etc.

Some brave soul want to try a dtruss sudo <user> ssh to see what the last system call is before the bus error? (Will this even work?)

Makes me wonder if making a new dummy user after the update will work around the problems. Or is it root only that works? If so, sounds like a permissions problem.

Somebody (experiencing the problem) care to create a new user in System Prefs, su to that user, and see if they can SSH?

breun - it may do, but I'd rather put things back exactly as they were before applying the next update.

Still fails with a brand new user account.

Do you by the way have a customized /etc/ssh_config ?

Same "Bus Error" after creating a new admin user and no, no customizations to my ssh_config.

The permissions look fine as far as I can tell - 755 (everyone can execute and read, only root can write).

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 574416 Feb 27 00:03 /usr/bin/ssh

Have you installed Rogue Amoeba's Instant Hijack?

If so, try:

*sudo /usr/local/hermes/bin/hermesctl unload*

then see if ssh works again.

Bingo -- this fixes the issue for me.

Thank you! That's it. SSH works when Instant Hijack is stopped.

I have removed Instant Hijack and will wait until Rogue Amoeba releases a fix. I don't need Instant Hijack more than SSH 🙂

Thank you very much. This fixed the problem for me.

Thank you!!!!

Removing Instant Hijack did the trick for me too.