Starting sshd: Missing privilege separation directory: /var/empty/sshd

The SSHD service while restarting, looks for the “/var/empty/sshd/etc” directory which contains a symlink to the ‘localtime’ file and if not found result in “cannot create symbolic link `/var/empty/sshd/etc’: No such file or directory” error message.
The complete error message looks as follows:

-bash-3.2# service sshd restart
cp: cannot create symbolic link `/var/empty/sshd/etc': No such file or directory
Starting sshd: Missing privilege separation directory: /var/empty/sshd
[FAILED]

The solution is to create the “/var/empty/sshd/etc” directory and then create a symlink for localtime file. SSH to your server and execute:

# mkdir /var/empty/sshd/etc

# cd /var/empty/sshd/etc

# ln -s /etc/localtime localtime

Once done, you should be able to restart the sshd service.