Dear Maintainer,

This problem is experienced on Debian 13 (Trixie).

When trying to reload the Systemd controlled "ssh" service (using
systemctl reload ssh), the reload runs into an error:

root@debian13:~# systemctl reload ssh
Job for ssh.service failed because the control process exited with error code.
See "systemctl status ssh.service" and "journalctl -xeu ssh.service" for details.

The logs show:

Feb 18 10:47:45 debian13 systemd[1]: Reloading ssh.service - OpenBSD Secure Shell server...
Feb 18 10:47:45 debian13 sshd[163]: Received SIGHUP; restarting.
Feb 18 10:47:45 debian13 sshd[163]: fatal: Cannot bind any address.
Feb 18 10:47:45 debian13 systemd[1]: ssh.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=255/EXCEPTION
Feb 18 10:47:45 debian13 systemd[1]: ssh.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Feb 18 10:47:45 debian13 systemd[1]: Reload failed for ssh.service - OpenBSD Secure Shell server.

The Systemd service unit (/usr/lib/systemd/system/ssh.service) shows the
following ExecReload parameters:

ExecReload=/usr/sbin/sshd -t
ExecReload=/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID

Running this command manually, results int he same problem:

root@debian13:~# kill -HUP $(pgrep -x sshd)

Feb 18 11:27:44 debian13 sshd[195958]: Received SIGHUP; restarting.
Feb 18 11:27:44 debian13 sshd[195958]: fatal: Cannot bind any address.
Feb 18 11:27:44 debian13 systemd[1]: ssh.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=255/EXCEPTION
Feb 18 11:27:44 debian13 systemd[1]: ssh.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

I stumbled into this when an Ansible task, which attempts to reload
the "ssh" service after config changes, ran into an error.

The service reload works on Debian 12 (bookworm).

I just checked and this works fine for me on trixie, so I need more
information about your server configuration.  For example, are you using
ListenAddress, or anything else that might affect how sshd tries to bind
its listen socket?

Thanks for checking in on this report.

It's a standard SSH config, without manual config changes.

root@debian13:~# grep -i listen /etc/ssh/sshd_config
#ListenAddress 0.0.0.0
#ListenAddress ::

root@debian13:~# systemctl reload ssh
Job for ssh.service failed because the control process exited with error
code.
See "systemctl status ssh.service" and "journalctl -xeu ssh.service" for
details.

To give more context: This is a LXC container running Debian 13 on a Debian
12 host. Maybe this is an important information needed in this context.

I just tried to reproduce the same reload error on another LXC container
which was upgraded from Debian 12 to 13 (Host running Debian 12) but here I
did not get any errors.

I have to dig deeper into this to find the differences.

I noticed that on a newly installed Debian 13 LXC (using the "download"
template), the ssh.socket unit is enabled and active:

root@debian13:~# systemctl status ssh.socket
● ssh.socket - OpenBSD Secure Shell server socket
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/ssh.socket; enabled; preset:
enabled)
     Active: active (listening) since Wed 2026-02-18 14:23:30 UTC; 1h 28min
ago
 Invocation: 9615c912c29d45319a6124517c0f74f7
   Triggers: ● ssh.service
     Listen: [::]:22 (Stream)
      Tasks: 0 (limit: 76096)
     Memory: 8K (peak: 256K)
        CPU: 328us
     CGroup: /system.slice/ssh.socket

This triggers the ssh.service. On the other hand, the ssh.service unit
shows the "TriggeredBy" unit:

root@debian13:~# systemctl status ssh
● ssh.service - OpenBSD Secure Shell server
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/ssh.service; enabled; preset:
enabled)
    Drop-In: /etc/systemd/system/ssh.service.d
             └─override.conf
             /run/systemd/system/service.d
             └─zzz-lxc-service.conf
     Active: active (running) since Wed 2026-02-18 15:50:31 UTC; 4s ago
 Invocation: 5727506f7b9c4af0963036c0945e1658
TriggeredBy: ● ssh.socket
       Docs: man:sshd(8)
             man:sshd_config(5)
    Process: 3165 ExecStartPre=/usr/sbin/sshd -t (code=exited,
status=0/SUCCESS)
   Main PID: 3167 (sshd)
      Tasks: 1 (limit: 76096)
     Memory: 1.3M (peak: 2M)
        CPU: 15ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/ssh.service
             └─3167 "sshd: /usr/sbin/sshd -D [listener] 0 of 10-100
startups"

The LXC container which were upgraded to Trixie don't show this. The
ssh.socket unit is disabled and there's no trigger in the ssh.service:

root@debian13upgraded:~# systemctl status ssh.socket
○ ssh.socket - OpenBSD Secure Shell server socket
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/ssh.socket; disabled; preset:
enabled)
     Active: inactive (dead)
   Triggers: ● ssh.service
     Listen: [::]:22 (Stream)

root@debian13upgraded:~# systemctl status ssh
● ssh.service - OpenBSD Secure Shell server
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/ssh.service; enabled; preset:
enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Wed 2026-02-18 15:20:59 CET; 1h 30min
ago
 Invocation: bba7bd32e29d45199235a58c6790ebc2
       Docs: man:sshd(8)
             man:sshd_config(5)
    Process: 25288 ExecStartPre=/usr/sbin/sshd -t (code=exited,
status=0/SUCCESS)
   Main PID: 25291 (sshd)
      Tasks: 3 (limit: 154378)
     Memory: 4.8M (peak: 12.3M)
        CPU: 22.706s
     CGroup: /system.slice/ssh.service
             ├─25291 "sshd: /usr/sbin/sshd -D [listener] 1 of 10-100
startups"
             ├─35860 "sshd-session: unknown [priv]"
             └─35861 "sshd-auth: unknown [net]"

I can reproduce the reload error on all the newly installed Debian 13
containers.
On all the upgraded Debian 13 containers the issue does not appear.

Probably related: Bug #1077765