Thanks. I just ran through all of these and still not connecting.

Do you connect with.
ssh -l "username" "ip address of server"
or is your user account you attempting to connect with configured on the server?

The user account is configured on my server and my client machine. I've tried ssh hostname, ssh ip , ssh user@hostname, ssh user@ip, and I just tried ssh -l

I still get a time out error on port 22.

If that's all you get, then nothing's listening on port 22 at 198.200.252.23.

That's a public IP address (Schaumburg, Illinois?) you're attempting to connect to. Is that address directly assigned to a NIC on one of your systems? Or is it assigned to the broadband router? Earlier you tried connecting to 196.100.2.2, but that address is assigned to AfriNIC (Mauritius). Where does that address come from?

I think we should take this from the start. What's the IP address of the server you're trying to connect to? The address that appears when you type ifconfig on the server?

Is the client on the same physical network?

Addition to Ser_Olmy's comment:

is the port even opened to listen (### i doubt that it should listen) ?

Addtion to Ser_Olmy and SAbhi's comments,

- You should try ssh localhost first, to make sure that ssh is running and is listening on port 22 before connecting from a remote client(may be the same or different subnet with server).
- Could you post your following debugging log lines rather than just only at "debug1: Connecting to 198.100.252.23 [198.100.252.23] port 22.". We need more lines than that.

$ ssh -v 198.100.252.23
OpenSSH_6.4, OpenSSL 1.0.1e-fips 11 Feb 2013
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config
debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 51: Applying options for *
debug1: Connecting to 198.100.252.23 [198.100.252.23] port 22.

Finally got it. Thank you to everyone that helped, all of your advice led me to final conclusion.

In the end, I did a fresh install of Scientific Linux server. Again ,a long story having different issues with different distros and finally found one that installed without any problems on my hardware.

Followed this tutorial step by step on my fresh install:

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/centos-ssh/


Now it works. For the record, I was also confused about the ip of my server so that was the biggest issue but then it was compounded by adding incorrect info to a bunch of config files, many of which were unnecessary as I have now learned and I'm sure they caused more problems. Ugghhh!

My last question is should I set up static ip? It seems that my ip is reserved on my router because all of my devices get the same ip every time I reboot them. I'm sure static ip may be helpful but unecessay?

It may seem to get the same IP every time, but that's just because IP addresses handed out by a DHCP has a lease time. Once the lease expires, it has to be renewed. Reboot your server (or your router!) at the wrong time and you end up with a different IP address.

You should absolutely configure your server with a static IP address.

1 members found this post helpful.

ok, one last question on this topic

I went back and changed the port to a non standard port. I changed 22 in the iptables and sshd_config files. Now I have to use the -p argument for the new port number when I ssh. What do I have to change in the configs so it just looks to the new port without having to -p every time?

This statement is not wrong, its a option but not the only solution.

You can configure in you router that your host macadress should receive the same ip all the time.
It called static ip reciec by dhcp, so the above is correct.

Thanks everyone. I used this tutorial and configured static ip on my server

http://www.putorius.net/2012/10/how-...ddress-in.html


Server still gets to the internet and I can still ssh to server so I'm guessing it ok. I can even ssh from my phone (i feel like a pro now!)

still have to type -p when I ssh but I'll figure that part out and then move onto some more complicated stuff

You'll have to use the -p parameter as long as you use a non-standard port number. How else would the ssh client know which port number to use? It can't very well try all 65535 ports and see if one of them happens to host an SSH service.

1 members found this post helpful.

Ha, OK. I thought I could specificy the port in a config file but I guess not. I'm learning every day

I stand corrected: It seems you can do exactly that by combining the "Host" and "Port" parameters.

thanks!