Comment 4 for bug 15359

severity 151743 important
thanks

On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 02:08:14AM +0100, Jonathan Amery wrote:
> Hmm, I tried this on a stable machine here, and got the same error:
>
> allison.empire.pick.ucam.org:~/ # [02/07/16.02:06:12] $
> : pts/6 bash[4621] ; ssh-keygen -p -N '' -f key1
> cipher_decrypt: bad ciphertext length 337
> allison.empire.pick.ucam.org:~/ # [02/07/16.02:06:16] $
> : pts/6 bash[4622] ; dpkg --list ssh
> Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
> | Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
> |/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
> ||/ Name Version Description
> +++-==============-==============-============================================
> ii ssh 1.2.3-9.4 Secure rlogin/rsh/rcp replacement (OpenSSH)
>
> Do you have an extant backup of the host key from before the upgrade?
> I fear that it might have got corrupted somewhere.

While this is obviously a nasty bug, it doesn't seem to be having
widespread effect, so I'm downgrading it.

Perhaps one thing that would help would be if ssh's postinst backed up
host keys before attempting to edit them?

Regards,

--
Colin Watson [<email address hidden>]