topic Re: Suddenly ssh_exchange_identification-Failure in Operating System - Linux

Suddenly ssh_exchange_identification-Failure

mbscholz — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 08:08:50 GMT

Hello everybody,

we sometimes have a strange problem: Some of our servers suddenly don't allow any login (neither via ssh nor via local Terminal nor via Ilo-Console) anymore. Some services seem to crash aswell. When trying to connect via ssh the response is "ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host", when trying to connect via Ilo or locally there's simply no response after entering the username. Our only chance is to reboot the server, after that everything works fine, just as before.

We faced this problem on Debian (Etch and Lenny) as well as on RedHat (RHEL5) systems. It happens every few weeks on another machine, so investigating is quite difficult, especially as all logfiles die in the moment of the crash. The machines are of different types, such as DNS or Radius Servers.

Has anybody experienced a similar problem (and an idea of the reasons for it)?

I'm thankful for any help.

Best regards,
Michael

PS: Just to state this out, this is not a problem of hosts.deny/allow as it happens suddenly.

Re: Suddenly ssh_exchange_identification-Failure

Jupinder Bedi — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 08:39:29 GMT

hello ,

There is no need to reboot the server everytime . smiple login from the console and restart the sshd daemon.

Also this problem is due to the old version of ssh . Please apply the latest patch and it will resolve your issue.

Good luck

Re: Suddenly ssh_exchange_identification-Failure

Michal Kapalka (mikap) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 09:24:57 GMT

hi,

check this link, maybe it will help you :

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/sshexchangeidentification-connection-closed-by-remote-host-103423/

mikap

Re: Suddenly ssh_exchange_identification-Failure

mbscholz — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 11:44:14 GMT

Thanks to you both. Unfortunately there's no way to restart the sshd (as I wrote there's no way to get a terminal, not via ssh nor locally).

The link fits my problem a bit better, but doesn't provide a solution :-(

I'm really curious if somebody else has this problem...and found a solution, of course.

Best regards,
Michael

Re: Suddenly ssh_exchange_identification-Failure

Jupinder Bedi — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:15:09 GMT

I faced the same problem on hpux server and I installed the latest recommended patch and finally the server is running fine .

Thats why I told you to install the latest patch of ssh

Re: Suddenly ssh_exchange_identification-Failure

mbscholz — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:59:16 GMT

Hmm, alright. Unfortunately our systems are up to date, so this won't help. Fascinatingly this problem occured on the ssh-server of the ilo-Board today. It appears to me as if this was a bug in the ssh-server, in all major versions...

Re: Suddenly ssh_exchange_identification-Failure

mbscholz — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 07:17:05 GMT

An Update to this: It seems to happen after an uptime of 55 or 111 days. Can anybody confirm this? While googling I noticed that this problem seems to be quite widespread whithout solutions...probably some time somebody passes by this entry and can confirm this :)

Re: Suddenly ssh_exchange_identification-Failure

Gou_1 — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 15:48:00 GMT

This has been happening to us too. We are running RHEL 4 and like you, it just started happening all of a sudden. I'm starting to suspect a hardware problem. Though, there are no logs.

This guy had a similar problem and he said something about the SCSI card
http://www.unix.com/linux/87930-ssh_-exchange-identification-connection-closed-remote-host.html