MacOS – Conflict with the Mac user won’t let me connect to the site’s FTP

ftpmacosNetworksshterminal

I realize this may be a weird thing to ask and that it doesn't make much sense, so I will clarify the issue here. It is a very bizarre issue that I do not understand why is happening and I do not know how to fix.

Here's the scenario: My Mac's user name is andyibanez. I am also the owner of https://www.andyibanez.com. I want to configure my website to use a different subdomain for FTP, SSH, and all those goodies, called ftp, so my ftp host will be ftp.andyibanez.com. So I created the DNS settings and tried to use them.

Here's the weird thing, though: When I open the Terminal app and type ssh andyibanez@ftp.andyibanez.com, the operation fails immediately, it doesn't even try to connect to the internet. I know it doesn't because it fails as soon as I send the command by pressing the Enter key.

ssh: Could not resolve hostname ftp.andyibanez.com: nodename nor servname provided, or not known

All apps I have tried to use SSH and FTP have failed immediately. That includes Cyberduck and Transmit.

Trying to ping ftp.andyibanez.com doesn't work, either.

ping: cannot resolve ftp.andyibanez.com: Unknown host

At this point you may be thinking that I have misconfigured my DNS settings. Nope, I am 100% I didn't, for the following reasons:

All operations in regarding that host fail immediately.
I have actually tried a different computer (that doesn't have andyibanez as a user) and it worked fine. I was also able to connect fine using the Transmit iOS app.
I set up another domain as ftp.myotherdomain.com with the same things as ftp.andyibanez.com and it works fine. I can connect to it with no problems.

Of course, I have the easy workaround that I can connect with this computer by setting a different subdomain or even using the naked domain. So I can connect to SSH. I am asking this because I am really curious as to why this happens.

Best Answer

What does dig ssh.andyibanez.com return to you? DNS is not immediate action and there is some TTL. If you did the DNS change and started trying immediately, you or your DNS provider has the records cached.

The easiest way is to way few hours and it will start work (I can resolve these hostnames from my place and initiate ssh connection).

Other way around is to flush your local DNS cache, probably with something like this:

sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

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Mac OSX 10.6 does not respect DNS responses with a TTL (time to live) of 0 (which is what DD-WRT based routers are set to by default). You will need to go into the DD-WRT router and into the Administation -> Services tab. You will see a box called Additional DNS options. Add the following value to this box :

local-ttl=5

Save and reboot your router and your Mac, and you should be able to see server.local in terminal (without having it in your hosts file).

MacOS – How to manage multiple ssh sessions with ease on Mac OS X

There are two ways I manage, or have seen people manage, SSH data:

Good 'ole, command line, plain text, ssh_config file.

Create a file called config inside ~/.ssh. You can specify global parameters by putting them above any host declarations. When I started using MacPorts, I had to explicitly define a default SSH Private Key to use automatically when connecting, so as the very first line of the file I put;

IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa

When you define custom rules for hosts (and you can even use * as a wildcard), it looks something like this:

Host prod-*
  User jason
  Port 2222
  LocalForward 5901 localhost:5901
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/work-id_rsa

Then when I run ssh prod-script for example, all the rest of the rules get applied automatically.

A lot of people who don't want to manually manage all their stuff in such a cumbersome manner quickly find JellyfiSSH. (Mac App Store Link. The same people also became very annoyed when it stopped being downloadable for free.)

JellyfiSSH gives you GUI access to almost everything that can be specified in the command line or ssh_config file. JellyfiSSH is just a configuration storage app for organization purposes, because it generates the commands based off the options you set and upon clicking connect, opens a new terminal window with all of your options defined on the command line. JellyfiSSH is not a terminal app on it's own.

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