SSH Error – ssh_exchange_identification: Connection Closed by Remote Host

key-authenticationlinuxssh

I'm not using hosts.allow or hosts.deny, furthermore SSH works from my windows-machine (same laptop, different hard drive) but not my Linux machine.

ssh -vvv root@host -p port gives:

OpenSSH_6.6, OpenSSL 1.0.1f 6 Jan 2014
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config
debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 20: Applying options for *
debug2: ssh_connect: needpriv 0
debug1: Connecting to host [host] port <port>.
debug1: Connection established.
debug1: identity file /home/torxed/.ssh/id_dsa type -1
debug1: identity file /home/torxed/.ssh/id_dsa-cert type -1
debug1: Enabling compatibility mode for protocol 2.0
debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_6.6
ssh_exchange_identification: read: Connection reset by peer

On the windows machine, everything works fine, so I checked the security logs and the lines in there are identical, the server treats the two different "machines" no different and they are both allowed via public-key authentication.

So that leads to the conclusion that this must be an issue with my local ArchLinux laptop.. but what?

[torxed@archie ~]$ cat .ssh/known_hosts 
[torxed@archie ~]$

So that's not the problem…

[torxed@archie ~]$ sudo iptables -L
Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination         

Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination         

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination

No conflicts with the firewall settings (for now)..

[torxed@archie ~]$ ls -la .ssh/
total 20
drwx------  2 torxed users 4096 Sep  3  2013 .
drwx------ 51 torxed users 4096 May 11 11:11 ..
-rw-------  1 torxed users 1679 Sep  3  2013 id_rsa
-rw-r--r--  1 torxed users  403 Sep  3  2013 id_rsa.pub
-rw-r--r--  1 torxed users  170 May 11 11:21 known_hosts

Permissions appear to be fine (same on the server)..
Also tried without configuring /etc/ssh/ssh_config with the same result except for a lot of auto-configuration going on in the client which ends up with the same error.

Best Answer

Originally posted on Ask Ubuntu

If you have ruled out any "external" factors, the following set of steps usually helps to narrow it down. So while this doesn't directly answer your question, it may help tracking down the error cause.

Troubleshooting sshd

What I find generally very useful in any such cases is to start sshd without letting it daemonize. The problem in my case was that neither syslog nor auth.log showed anything meaningful.

When I started it from the terminal I got:

# $(which sshd) -Ddp 10222
/etc/ssh/sshd_config line 8: address family must be specified before ListenAddress.

Much better! This error message allowed me to see what's wrong and fix it. Neither of the log files contained this output.

NB: at least on Ubuntu the $(which sshd) is the best method to satisfy sshd requirement of an absolute path. Otherwise you'll get the following error: sshd re-exec requires execution with an absolute path. The -p 10222 makes sshd listen on that alternative port, overriding the configuration file - this is so that it doesn't clash with potentially running sshd instances. Make sure to choose a free port here.

Finally: connect to the alternative port (ssh -p 10222 user@server).

This method has helped me many many times in finding issues, be it authentication issues or other types. To get really verbose output to stdout, use $(which sshd) -Ddddp 10222 (note the added dd to increase verbosity). For more debugging goodness check man sshd.

The main advantage of this method is that it allows you to check the sshd configuration without having to restart the sshd on the default port. Normally this should not interfere with existing SSH-connections, but I've seen it. So this allows one to validate the configuration file prior to - potentially - cutting off ones access to a remote server (for example I have that for some VPS and even for physical servers where I need to pay extra to get out-of-band access to the machine).

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