Brian Hatch, author of Hacking Linux Exposed, wrote in to point out his step-by-step guide for safely upgrading OpenSSH. "Most folks don't realize that you can kill off the sshd server process (the one that forks off copies to handle incoming connections) without killing off any existing connections.. . .
Brian Hatch, author of Hacking Linux Exposed, wrote in to point out his step-by-step guide for safely upgrading OpenSSH. "Most folks don't realize that you can kill off the sshd server process (the one that forks off copies to handle incoming connections) without killing off any existing connections. That means you can log in, kill off the server process, and still work on the system until you log out. Instead, most folks think you need to upgrade and reboot so the changes take effect. This is not the case. However, if you don't take a few precautions, then you could find yourself in the unfortunate situation where you've killed the old process and accidentally logged out (or, more likely, kill all sshd processes) before starting the new daemon.