Windows 2000 OpenSSH not allowing logins

[Shimron Trammell]

Well here is the situation: I've been given the project of setting up Insight Manager and getting it to either auto deploy out to our 60+ some odd servers, or manually do it. Insight Manager itself seems to be working, but the OpenSSH part is the one thats killing me. I've reinstalled a couple of times, I've got it running as an Administrator locally on my machine. My /Program Files/OpenSSH/etc/passwd file looks correct, but I can't SSH into the system or run mxagentconfig without getting an error of: Failed to establish connection to "server". Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Joel Rubenstein]

Is your SIM server running Windows 2003?

What are you attempting to auto deploy to your 60+ servers?

[Shimron Trammell]

The SIM server is running Windows 2000. I am basically just trying to deploy at first the Proliant Support Pack, and then OpenSSH and such. Right now I'd be happy to get OpenSSh running on the SIM serve and be able to connect to it through SSH. I have a feeling once I get that far I'll be alright.

[Joel Rubenstein]

For the initialPSP task to run successfully you must have openSSH installed and configured on your CMS to use the account named "administrator". openSSH does not need to be installed on any of the managed systems. For help in understanding and troubleshooting openSSH see the white paper "Secure Shell (SSH) in HP Systems Insight Manager" available at http://www.hp.com/go/hpsim --> Information Library --> White papers

[Shimron Trammell]

Thanks for the quick reply. I've gone through the white paper and its very helpful. My problem is going through all of the troubleshooting in it mine always dies at mxagentconfig. I've checked the keys, removed keys, checked my passwd file, and it still seems to die at that point.

[Joel Rubenstein]

if mxagentconfig fails to connect or hangs then your only other option is to manually copy the key as documented in step 6 on page 16 of the white paper.

[Shimron Trammell]

Thanks again for the quick reply. I will try the manual copying and then reply. Although just off of the top of my head would the manual copying of the keys even help it if I'm just trying to run mxagentconfig on the CMS? Or should I not even run mxagentconfig on the CMS?

[Joel Rubenstein]

yes, you must run mxagentconfig on the CMS to complete the openSSH configuration or manually copy the key since it is used by the initialPSP deployment task

[Shimron Trammell]

Well I copied the keys over manually and then running mxagentconfig gives me failed to establish connection to "server". I went into services to make sure it is SSH is running, and it is running as Administrator.

[Joel Rubenstein]

After you copy the keys then you should be finished configuring SSH. We did that because mxagentconfig was failing.

A quick test is to select the CMS and then go to Tools --> Command Line Tools --> Windows --> netstat If this runs without error then you should be able to do your initialPSP installs.

[Shimron Trammell]

I tried running netstat on the CMS and this is what I get:

EXCEPTION CLASS: com.hp.mx.dtf.sshClient.MxSshFailedConnectionException
EXCEPTION: Unable to contact the SSH server on node "foo.domain.com".

[Joel Rubenstein]

That would seem to indicate that the SSH service is not even running. Try to manually login to SSH.

open a cmd prompt
ssh administrator@localhost

any errors?

[Shimron Trammell]

That's the first thing I thought was that it was not running. I did the ssh administrator@localhost, it lets me know that the authenticity of host 'localhost' can't be established. It gives me the RSA key fingerprint and then prompts me for administrators password. But then when I put in the password I get Permission denied please try again. Then I try 2 more times and I get a Permission denied (publickey,password,keyboard-interactive)

[Joel Rubenstein]

That typically occurs when you enter the wrong password. If the password is correct then you might want to try to remove and reinstall openSSH. You also might want to open a case with the HP support center since troubleshooting problems of this complexity via this forum is very difficult.

[Shimron Trammell]

Thanks for all of the help Joel. I did a reinstall of OpenSSH and now I can SSH into the CMS from other machines, and using localhost. Mxagentconfig still does not want to run. I've basically run into Scott's problem here: http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=719023

[Joel Rubenstein]

The way to fix that error is to delete the file the C:\Program Files\HP\Systems Insight Manager\config\sshtools\known_hosts and then stop / restart the SIM service and run identify systems on all nodes. A new file will be created.

It occurs when openSSH is reinstalled.

You should be able to just delete all the lines from the file that reference the managed system (IP, DNS or local name) and then rerun identification on that system but when I tried this I was unsuccessful.

[Shimron Trammell]

Thanks Joel that fixed my problem! I went into the known_hosts file, deleted out all of the old keys, reran mxagentconfig successfuly on the CMS, restarted the HP SIM service, and then I had to run SIM on the server itself and make it reidentify itself. I can now push out the PSP and start using this app fully. Thank you Joel!

[Ronald Kowalka · Accepted solution]

For those of you who come to this thread having installed HP SIM 4.2 after the Dec 8th release, removing the known_hosts file will no longer work. You will have to use a new command option to remove the system from the known_hosts. This command is: mxagentconfig -r -n . With HP SIM 4.2, the known_hosts will be memory resident and the only way to remove the system from the memory resident copy is to use the -r option, then the revised changes are copied to the flat file.
rk