New to ssh & putty - connection refused

[Tim O'Connell]

Hi,

I have just downloaded & installed ssh on my HPUX 11.11. server. Install worked perfectly. I have downloaded putty.exe to my pc. I now try co connect to the HPUX server using Putty/SSH & I get "Server unexpectedly closed network connection". When I look at syslog.log I see "Refused connection from xx.xx.xxx.xx "(My pc'IP address). I have added a line to /etc/services - ssh 22/ssh # Secure Shell Protocol - but this didn't help. If I use putty to connect using telnet it connects fine. I have looked at the forum but haven't been able to find a solution. Hope someone can help as I'm out of my depth here.

Thanks,

Tim

[Anshumali]

Should be running after the new install, you should be sure that there is no FW blocking.
Try with /sbin/init.d/secsh stop; /sbin/init.d/secsh start

Anshu

[Matti_Kurkela · Accepted solution]

The SSH daemon does not care whether port 22 is declared as ssh in /etc/services or not. Adding ssh to /etc/services just helps tools like netstat to identify the SSH connections.

If I recall correctly, SSH as packaged by HP will support libwrap: if you have /etc/hosts.deny and/or /etc/hosts.allow configured, sshd will obey them even though tcpwrapper is not explicitly invoked at any point.

The syslog line "Refused connection from..." indicates that the incoming connection reached the application layer of the HP-UX server, so it's unlikely to be a firewall issue.

MK

[Anshumali]

Agreed Matti.... conenction refused messaged at syslog.log means no firewall blockage in between.....

Thanks,
Anshu

[Steven Schweda]

Note that "Refused connection from [...]" in
the server's log is different from a
"connection refused" complaint on the client
side.

Usually, the first step in tracing a problem
like this it to use a verbose "ssh" command
on the client. Something like:
ssh -v [...]

I have no idea how to do this with PuTTY, but
if it has a "-v" option, I'd try that.

[Geoff Wild]

in /etc/rc.config.d/sshd
set
SSHD_START=1

then

/sbin/init.d/secsh start

Rgds...Geoff

[Tim O'Connell]

Matti,

You hit the nail on the head. I have a hosts.allow & a hosts.deny. The hosts.deny says ALL:ALL. I renamed that & putty worked but a little slow. Is it OK to not have a hosts.deny?.

Thanks for all the replies.

Tim

[Tim O'Connell]

Thanks, Matti & all who replied

[Matti_Kurkela]

As your hosts.deny had ALL:ALL in it, your site obviously follows the recommended "allow only what you need and deny everything else" policy.

Instead of removing ALL:ALL from hosts.deny, I'd recommend putting "sshd:ALL" or maybe something more limited to hosts.allow.

As with standard tcpwrapper rules, hosts.allow takes precedence over hosts.deny.

MK