ssh respawning too fast, stopped

If you see the following messages in syslog:


Jan 16 07:08:56 XXX init: ssh main process (17583) terminated with status 255
Jan 16 07:08:56 XXX init: ssh main process ended, respawning
Jan 16 07:08:56 XXX init: ssh main process (17586) terminated with status 255
Jan 16 07:08:56 XXX init: ssh main process ended, respawning
Jan 16 07:08:56 XXX init: ssh main process (17589) terminated with status 255


You may be tempted to Google the cause and solution.
In my case, it was a red herring.


Running /usr/sbin/sshd on the command line told me there was an error in my config file.