Starting OpenSSH server in Windows with debug messages enabled (-d)

I have a very strange problem trying to make the OpenSSH server that ships with Windows 10 working fine. Basically, if I start the service manually by running C:\Windows\System32\OpenSSH\sshd.exe, everything works fine, but when I start the service through the Windows GUI or Start-service sshd from Powershell, I am not able to connect (I get a publickey denied - I have disabled password logging in the configuration file, so the problem might be a permission issue when trying to read the authorized_keys file). I would like to understand better what is going on by reading the debug messages of the sshd daemon, i.e. what you get by starting manually with -d, but even if I add the -d option to the Windows GUI which allows to specify startup parameters for a service, I am not sure where I should be reading those messages (i.e. the event viewer does not contain those messages). It would be good if there was a way to add startup parameters to the Start-service sshd powershell command and read those messages in the Powershell session... Any idea?

Solution 1:

The Windows OpenSSH server logs to the event log by default. You should look in the Event Log Viewer under Applications and Services Logs -> OpenSSH. The Admin log shows errors, the Operational log shows Informational messages.

The OpenSSH logging is controlled by your C:\ProgramData\ssh\sshd_config file. The entry SyslogFacility determines the log location.

I got the answer from here: https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/wiki/Logging-Facilities.