Appears that either a race condition going on or sshd (ssh server)is getting started before networking is enabled. I assigned sshd in the config to bind to a specific IP addr (manual server IP) as I have two network cards and only want one to get sshd traffic. But when I boot, sshd crashes with no IP found. Yet if I login and then from the command line restart sshd it works fine, so I know I setup config correctly.

For now I just removed that IP binding in the config file, to allow it to work through a reboot and all is well. I run headless and hate to hook up a monitor and keyboard to restart. Also I unplug the other cable from the card that connects to the internet, so ssh is not a security hole from the internet except for a short period of time when I plug in and get a distro update.

Anyway, just a informational post and if someone may have an idea what I could do about it.

I guess you need to start the whole thing after the network is up. So you need to configure sshd.service to wait for network-online.target. https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Sof...NetworkTarget/

Thanks for the link. You'd think that would be the 'default' for the sshd service as you should always wait for the network to be initialized first before setting up your service... Or visa versa, the proper way, the network hardware setup should be one of the first things to get initialized immediately after boot before anything else starts running (just like memory, disks, video card if present). Seems logical to me.

Also I wonder why one has to even install sshd in the first place as Linux is multi-user by default and one should be able to reach the machine by ssh from any other machine in the network. Ie. ssh/sshd should be available from the first time you install the OS.