I encountered this issue when execute 'mvn hudson-dev:run', building from source code.
Workaround is editing war/pom.xml, removing a dependency 'org.jenkins-ci.modules:sshd'.

My environment is below.

• os : Mac OS X 10.7.2
• java : 1.6.0_29
• maven : 3.0.3

This issue also occurred for me when installing version 461 on a new box running Mac OSX 10.7.2. I got this error after changing the UserName and GroupName in /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.jenkins-ci.plist file to something other than "daemon" "daemon".

As my stack trace look slightly different, I've included it below:

org.jvnet.hudson.reactor.ReactorException: java.lang.Error: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
at org.jvnet.hudson.reactor.Reactor.execute(Reactor.java:246)
at jenkins.InitReactorRunner.run(InitReactorRunner.java:43)
at jenkins.model.Jenkins.executeReactor(Jenkins.java:850)
at jenkins.model.Jenkins.<init>(Jenkins.java:762)
at hudson.model.Hudson.<init>(Hudson.java:81)
at hudson.model.Hudson.<init>(Hudson.java:77)
at hudson.WebAppMain$2.run(WebAppMain.java:217)
Caused by: java.lang.Error: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
at hudson.init.InitializerFinder.invoke(InitializerFinder.java:124)
at hudson.init.InitializerFinder$TaskImpl.run(InitializerFinder.java:184)
at org.jvnet.hudson.reactor.Reactor.runTask(Reactor.java:259)
at jenkins.model.Jenkins$6.runTask(Jenkins.java:839)
at org.jvnet.hudson.reactor.Reactor$2.run(Reactor.java:187)
at org.jvnet.hudson.reactor.Reactor$Node.run(Reactor.java:94)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:886)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:908)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:680)
Caused by: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
at hudson.init.InitializerFinder.invoke(InitializerFinder.java:120)
... 8 more
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
at org.jenkinsci.main.modules.sshd.SSHD.init(SSHD.java:144)
... 13 more

After poking around some more at it, I realized that my issue steamed from the JENKINS_HOME directory being owned by "daemon:daemon". After chown'ing /Users/Shared/Jenkins/Home to the user:group that I was setting in the daemon plist, everything launched correctly.

After running the package installer for Mac OSX, the JENKINS_HOME directory was automatically created and was initially owned by daemon daemon. If you are going to change the username and group, you have to remember to change the owner of JENKINS_HOME ... duh!

most likely not a ssh-plugin problem. maybe ssh-slaved as sshd start seems to fail,

duplicates JENKINS-12664

For me, upgrading from Jenkins 1.475 to Jenkins 1.495 solved the problem

My environment:

• Linux Mint 14 KDE (based on Ubuntu quantal 12.10), 64-bit

ceefour@annafi:~$ uname -a
Linux annafi.dev 3.5.0-21-generic #32-Ubuntu SMP Tue Dec 11 18:51:59 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
ceefour@annafi:~$ java -version
java version "1.7.0_09"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea7 2.3.3) (7u9-2.3.3-0ubuntu1~12.10.1)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 23.2-b09, mixed mode)

I think this may be fixed in https://github.com/jenkinsci/sshd-module/commit/e548a909eb360207986fc1d046a022a2f43f3049

See my comment in JENKINS-12355. Fixed since 1.492.