No SSH access to a Dir-615 router running DD-Wrt firmware

dd-wrtroutersshsshd

My current network setup consists of a D-link dir-615D1 flashed with DD-Wrt (v24 PreSp2 Build21061). This is hooked up directly to a Windows 7 PC with an Ethernet cable (With no internet access).

I have been having trouble accessing my router using SSH (I can still access Telnet though).

I reset the router to defaults, the only settings I changed was in:
192.168.1.1/Services.asp

Enabled SSHd (Using default settings)

After I set this I rebooted the router and tried to access SSH through Putty and WinSCP.

A moment after trying to open the connection I just received an error from both PUTTY and WINSCP: "Server unexpectedly closed network connection".

Could someone please offer me some assistance (I'm a bit of a novice but I'm sure it was going to work).

Perhaps the firmware didn't flash correctly?
or I need to do this?

I also tried a 30/30/30 reset and that didn't seem to fix it either.

Is there a way to debug the problem using Telnet?

More info:

Here is a screenshot of me trying to login with plink.exe using SSH followed by telnet.

enter image description here

Update: I downgraded to DD-WRT v24-sp2 revision 15778 and SSH now works.

enter image description here

Best Answer

This appears to be a problem with this version of the firmware. I have the exact same version and ssh access is not working for me either.

There are a couple of threads about this exact problem on the DD-WRT forums -- see http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=768261 and http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=758332 for more info. One commenter in the second thread says that "Build 21061 is KNOWN to have problems w/ SSH. Avoid it. Try another build."

These suggest that downgrading to version 20675 on a DIR-600 router (or build 19519 on an unspecified device) solved the problem, or that upgrading to a newer version should also work.

The main problem is that there are going to be bugs in different build versions, and there are occasionally regressions, of which ssh failing on this build appears to be one.

Just make sure that whatever build you use is compatible with your hardware version! Unfortunately the DD-WRT router database doesn't suggest any other versions for that particular model :(

(I'll update this if I try a different version and have some success :)

Related Solutions

DD-WRT with both https and sshd running in port 443

Configuration is likely in the /etc/ directory tree, likely in /etc/config. Try grep 443 /etc/* /etc/*/* to see if you can find the appropriate file.

You may have vi or nano installed to edit files already. The scripts to stop and start services should be in /etc/init.d. Running the script with restart as the parameter may restart the service.

You may be able to start the web service by stopping the ssh service and starting the web service. Your ssh connection should stay up even if you stop the service. You should then be able to change the sshd port in the web interface. The web interface may also be available on port 80.

Remote SSH access doesn’t work when OpenVPN client is enabled on DD-WRT

I wasn't happy with the policy based routing so after a full weekend of research, I got to this.

Packages do arrive at the router if you try to SSH against the WAN IP, however, because all OUTPUT traffic is diverted through the VPN (interface tun0) SSH won't succeed.

What's missing is a OUTPUT rule on iptables to route traffic on port 22 through the vlan2 interface (that's the interface connected directly to the internet)

# Create table 202 via the Gateway Ip on the Interface VLAN2
ip route add default via $(nvram get wan_gateway) dev vlan2 table 202

# Apply the rule on table 202 to packages marked with 22
ip rule add fwmark 22 table 202

# Tag with 22 every output package on port 22 not coming from any  machine in the local network
iptables -t mangle -I OUTPUT -p tcp --sport 22 -d ! 192.168.1.0/24 -j  MARK --set-mark 22

Note that the last command skips packages from the local network in my case 192.168.1.0/24, reason being that when SSHing from a host in local, the packages should be routed through br0 and not vlan2.

First issue these commands in the command line of your router to ensure they work with you, if somehow they break your routing, a restart will clear them. Once you have made sure they work, you can add them to the firewall script of your router

Note that my config IP and port is different because I am not using the default values.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

DD-WRT with both https and sshd running in port 443

Remote SSH access doesn’t work when OpenVPN client is enabled on DD-WRT

Related Question