Installing sshd in the Cygwin Package

I was installing sshd on my Windows XP computer after I was reminded about it on Lifehacker. I had previously installed Cygwin but I was missing a rather important step. The last little bit of running sshd-host-config was rather discouraging.

The service has been installed under LocalSystem account.
To start the service, call `net start sshd’ or `cygrunsrv -S sshd’.
chown: `system’: invalid user
chown: `system.544′: invalid user
chown: `system.544′: invalid user
chown: `system.544′: invalid user

Host configuration finished. Have fun!

Well, it’s difficult to have fun with sshd when the service won’t start. Fortunately, I discovered my mistake before too long. When I was making the passwd and group login files, I used mkpasswd -d and mkgroup -d, which put the domain users and groups into the files. I was supposed to use the -l switch. It turned out that I needed to add the system account to the passwd file and the group file. After I did that, everything was working. However, I should really remove some of the other users since they don’t need access and their passwords aren’t the greatest.