ssh login doesn't work with domain forward
 

Hi all,

I've got a domain name registered. In the control panel I've set the domain to forward to my personal IP address.

So I login from another location with the domain name and I get a message to trust the server (yes or no) which is normal and I get a password prompt so somehow it works. When I input the password I get:

and then I can try again.

If I do exactly the same login attempt from the same host but instead of the domain I use the exact IP address everything works well.

How could that be?

Thanks

You should definitely check that the name resolves to the correct IP address from this other location (nslookup/ping/host/whatever).

Aha, that's probably the problem. It resolves to a different address ... ? How's that possible? Could it be that it resolves to the IP address of the company that hosts my website (and redirection service) ?

If the hosting company is doing http redirects for your domain name, then yes, your domain name resolvs to their server. There's no such thing as redirects for SSH.

If on the other hand the DNS A record for your domain points to your private IP address, it should work regardless of service.

Ask the hosting service if they can also forward the ssh port to your server. If they can, it wouldn't matter what IP the domain resolves to. BTW you might want to move the ssh port to something unused outside of the privileged ports. (0-1023) I use ports up around 8000 for shh, the service will announce itself if all ports are scanned, but a lot of the script-kiddie junk only polls known ports for services. (21,22,53,80 etc etc)