Opening SSH Terminal in Plesk fails: /etc/ssh/ssh_config: Bad configuration option: permitrootlogin

Symptoms

• On a Plesk for Linux server, the extension SSH Terminal fails to open:

  Connection Broken

• Instead of the shell, the following error is shown in the terminal window:

  /etc/ssh/ssh_config: terminating, 1 bad configuration options
  /etc/ssh/ssh_config: line 49: Bad configuration option: permitrootlogin

• Starting a migration on the same server fails with a similar error:

  Failed to fetch basic information about resellers, clients and domains data from source servers Cause: Command execution failed on the local server with non-zero exit code. command: rsync -r --chmod=Fu=r,Du=rwx,go= --timeout=30 -e 'ssh -i /usr/local/psa/var/modules/panel-migrator/sessions/20240704142226/ssh-keys/id_rsa.203.0.113.2 -p 22 -o PasswordAuthentication=no -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o GSSAPIAuthentication=no' /usr/local/psa/admin/plib/modules/panel-migrator/backend/lib/python/parallels/plesk/source/legacy/extras/plesk_17_0_pmm_shared/ root@203.0.113.2 /root/plesk_migrator/plesk_migrator-f1i52pg00x1854vhqa1ft20ab9tuhncy/pmm_agent exit code: 12
  
  stdout: stderr: /etc/ssh/ssh_config: line 49: Bad configuration option: permitrootlogin /etc/ssh/ssh_config: terminating, 1 bad configuration options
  
  rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (0 bytes received so far) [sender] rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(228) [sender=3.2.3] That is a critical error, migration was stopped.

Cause

The server-level configuration directive PermitRootLogin is present in the SSH client configuration file /etc/ssh/ssh_config.

Resolution

1. Connect to the server using SSH.

2. Open the file /etc/ssh/ssh_config for editing.

3. Comment out the line with the directive PermitRootLogin by adding the symbol # at the start of the line and save the file.