Is any one else seeing ssh issues on Redhat Cent-OS recently?

[rtrask]

I installed Jenkins > 18 months ago, and it has worked well over that period. I configured it the user authentication to use SSHD, and we are using ssh to connect to our CVS server, but I don't believe we are using it anywhere else. 

About 2 weeks ago, I was not able to log in as admin. After a fair amount of head scratching I created a trouble ticket and reconfigured the server to a single admin, rather than matrix, and put the user / password on the start up. and switche to servlet container managed. Not ideal, but better than nothing until I can get the issue sorted. Then on Sunday of this week, I was doing a bit of work, and started seeing the jobs fail as their polling period hit, all with the following error:

Started by user zzzz

[EnvInject] - Loading node environment variables.

Building in workspace /proj/qctrlApps/jenkins/workspace/yyyyy

cvs checkout -P -D 15 Dec 2014 14:59:47 -0700 -d yyyy aaaaControl/xxxxApp

ERROR: CVS Authentication failed: null

org.netbeans.lib.cvsclient.connection.AuthenticationException: SSH connection failed.

       at org.netbeans.lib.cvsclient.connection.SSHConnection.open(SSHConnection.java:141)

       at org.netbeans.lib.cvsclient.Client$1.run(Client.java:374)

       at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:662)

Caused by: com.jcraft.jsch.JSchException: Auth cancel

       at com.jcraft.jsch.Session.connect(Session.java:511)

       at com.jcraft.jsch.Session.connect(Session.java:184)

       at org.netbeans.lib.cvsclient.connection.SSHConnection.open(SSHConnection.java:139)

       ... 2 more

ERROR: Cvs task failed

We use public key access, but the password does expire. However, that was not the case when I logged into the CVS server. Back on the jenkins build server, I tried the cvs command from the command line after inserting some quotes around the date, and I was able to checkout fine, with no warning or errors coming up. After digging around on the web I discovered that there was a recent issue with the CVS plug in and ssh that was fixed in 2.10, I am running 2.11 / 2.12, and it did not seem to be an issue before Sunday, or even earlier in the day on Sunday. I have a Jenkins server instance running on my Windows 7 workstation that I have been doing some experimentation with, and it has had no problems connecting to the CVS server. 

After further reading I tried to roll the cvs plugin back to 1.6, but that failed with a different reported error:

With 1.6 plugin

SEVERE: Failed to record SCM polling for hudson.model.FreeStyleProject@1801fb7d[csipApp]

java.lang.NullPointerException

        at hudson.scm.CVSSCM.getAllModulesNormalized(CVSSCM.java:330)

        at hudson.scm.CVSSCM$3.invoke(CVSSCM.java:721)

        at hudson.scm.CVSSCM$3.invoke(CVSSCM.java:716)

        at hudson.FilePath.act(FilePath.java:981)

        at hudson.FilePath.act(FilePath.java:959)

        at hudson.scm.CVSSCM.isUpdatable(CVSSCM.java:716)

        at hudson.scm.CVSSCM.compareRemoteRevisionWith(CVSSCM.java:196)

        at hudson.scm.SCM.poll(SCM.java:397)

        at hudson.model.AbstractProject.pollWithWorkspace(AbstractProject.java:1462)

        at hudson.model.AbstractProject._poll(AbstractProject.java:1433)

        at hudson.model.AbstractProject.poll(AbstractProject.java:1344)

        at hudson.triggers.SCMTrigger$Runner.runPolling(SCMTrigger.java:515)

        at hudson.triggers.SCMTrigger$Runner.run(SCMTrigger.java:544)

        at hudson.util.SequentialExecutionQueue$QueueEntry.run(SequentialExecutionQueue.java:118)

        at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:439)

        at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:303)

        at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:138)

        at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:895)

        at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:918)

I'm not sure if that is a backward compatibility issue, or just another manifestation of the same issue.

The only other piece of information I have is that I attempted to test the "Unix user/group database" method of access control, and using the sshd as the service, I get the following message:

Either Jenkins needs to run as root or User ‘zzzzz’ needs to belong to group root and ‘chmod g+r /etc/shadow’ needs to be done to enable Jenkins to read /etc/shadow

[rtrask]

A couple of other pieces of information:

uname -a

Linux ????????????? 2.6.18-371.11.1.el5 #1 SMP Mon Jun 30 04:51:39 EDT 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux 

# ssh -v

OpenSSH_4.3p2, OpenSSL 0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 01 Jul 2008