Command Line SSH restart Mac OSX Mountain Lion
There is no reason to 'unload' the sshd service, when instead you can just 'Stop' the sshd service. It will restart on it's own.
sudo launchctl stop com.openssh.sshd
See this answer to a similar question on ServerFault. The command should be the same in Mountain Lion.
You can stop the service using the 'unload' subcommand.
sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist
Update suggested by @MattClark: To restart the service use load
after unload
:
sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist
Note that existing SSH sessions will be terminated, so you need to run this independent of the current user session.
I couldn't confirm Ansgar's answer worked as there were no messages / obvious signs though I'm confident it did.
I also found killall sshd
which kills and restarts sshd processes with the disadvantage that any connections are stopped.