When managing Ubuntu 9.04 servers, many administrators notice significant SSH login delays. The primary culprits are often:

• ConsoleKit's message of the day (motd) updates
• Landscape-sysinfo daemon collecting system statistics

First, verify these services are running:

ps aux | grep -E 'console-kit-daemon|landscape'

You should see output similar to:

root      1234  0.0  0.1   1234   567 ?        Ss   Jan01   0:00 /usr/sbin/console-kit-daemon
root      5678  0.5  0.3   7890  1234 ?        S    Jan01   0:12 /usr/bin/landscape-sysinfo

To permanently disable the landscape-sysinfo daemon:

sudo update-rc.d -f landscape-sysinfo remove
sudo service landscape-sysinfo stop

For Ubuntu 9.04 specifically, you may also need to:

sudo chmod -x /etc/update-motd.d/*landscape*

For ConsoleKit, we have multiple approaches:

Method 1: Disable the service

sudo mv /etc/init.d/console-kit-daemon /etc/init.d/console-kit-daemon.disabled
sudo update-rc.d console-kit-daemon remove

Method 2: Modify PAM configuration

Edit /etc/pam.d/sshd and comment out any lines referencing pam_console or pam_ck_connector.

Consider these additional optimizations:

# Disable DNS resolution for SSH
echo "UseDNS no" | sudo tee -a /etc/ssh/sshd_config

# Reduce login grace time
echo "LoginGraceTime 30s" | sudo tee -a /etc/ssh/sshd_config

# Restart SSH service
sudo service ssh restart

After implementing these changes:

1. Monitor CPU usage during login with: top -b -n 1 | grep sshd
2. Check login times: time ssh localhost exit

You should see significant improvements in both CPU usage and login speed.

On Ubuntu 9.04 servers, many administrators notice significant delays during SSH authentication. When monitoring with top, you'll observe sshd process hitting 100% CPU utilization during login attempts. The primary culprits are typically:

PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
1234 root      20   0  100m  20m 4000 R  100  1.0   0:05.67 sshd
5678 root      20   0  120m  25m 5000 S   45  1.2   0:03.21 console-kit-dae
9012 landscape 20   0  150m  30m 6000 S   30  1.5   0:02.45 landscape-sysin

The landscape client provides system monitoring but consumes resources during login. To disable:

# Stop the running service
sudo /etc/init.d/landscape-client stop

# Prevent automatic startup
sudo update-rc.d -f landscape-client remove

# Alternative method for newer systems
sudo systemctl disable landscape-client
sudo systemctl stop landscape-client

ConsoleKit (console-kit-daemon) is a legacy session management service that's often unnecessary for headless servers:

# Check if running
ps aux | grep console-kit-daemon

# Disable the service
sudo mv /etc/init.d/console-kit-daemon /etc/init.d/console-kit-daemon.disabled
sudo update-rc.d console-kit-daemon remove

The Message of the Day (MOTD) system gathers dynamic information during login:

# Disable dynamic MOTD components
sudo chmod -x /etc/update-motd.d/*

# Create empty MOTD file
sudo echo "" > /etc/motd

# Alternative: Disable PAM MOTD module
sudo sed -i 's/^session.*pam_motd.*$//g' /etc/pam.d/sshd

After implementing these changes, test login performance:

# Time SSH connections before and after
time ssh user@server.example.com true

# Check active processes during login
ssh user@server.example.com "ps aux --sort=-%cpu | head -n 5"

For further optimization:

• Disable DNS lookups in sshd_config: UseDNS no
• Reduce login grace time: LoginGraceTime 30s
• Disable unused PAM modules like pam_lastlog