Remoting (SSH) into a cygwin box

Antowns · 06-18-2012, 06:41 AM

Hi all,

Trying to remote into a SSH Win XP machine running Cygwin (Password based auth, not keys) and I'm receiving the following error, bearing in mind that other users are able to remote into the same box without errors, I've posted a log below to see if anyone can depict any issue with it.

Code:

ant@as:~$ ssh -v -v Administrator@10.1.1.29
OpenSSH_5.9p1 Debian-5ubuntu1, OpenSSL 1.0.1 14 Mar 2012
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config
debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 19: Applying options for *
debug2: ssh_connect: needpriv 0
debug1: Connecting to 10.1.1.29 [10.1.1.29] port 22.
debug1: Connection established.
debug1: identity file /home/ant/.ssh/id_rsa type -1
debug1: identity file /home/ant/.ssh/id_rsa-cert type -1
debug1: identity file /home/ant/.ssh/id_dsa type -1
debug1: identity file /home/ant/.ssh/id_dsa-cert type -1
debug1: identity file /home/ant/.ssh/id_ecdsa type -1
debug1: identity file /home/ant/.ssh/id_ecdsa-cert type -1
ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host
ant@as:~$

It may be worth mentioning that where its saying 'Identity file', those don't actually exist (file wise) in the .ssh directory. Been pulling my hair out about this. Any help would be appreciated. I moved my config and known_hosts file from the .ssh directory leaving 1 private key used for a different machine in there.

MensaWater · 06-18-2012, 08:16 AM

ssh expects the connection to be secure and will fail if it can't be made secure. Most commonly I see it fail because either the user's home directory (and/or directories above it) are wide open (e.g. 777 or 666) so allow modification of all files within it including ssh files. At best the home should be chmod'ed 755. Additionally the user's .ssh subdirectory should ONLY be accessible by the user (e.g. chmod'ed 700). Allowing others to change a user's ssh setup means it can't be made secure so ssh will fail without giving good reasons.

Antowns · 06-18-2012, 12:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MensaWater

ssh expects the connection to be secure and will fail if it can't be made secure. Most commonly I see it fail because either the user's home directory (and/or directories above it) are wide open (e.g. 777 or 666) so allow modification of all files within it including ssh files. At best the home should be chmod'ed 755. Additionally the user's .ssh subdirectory should ONLY be accessible by the user (e.g. chmod'ed 700). Allowing others to change a user's ssh setup means it can't be made secure so ssh will fail without giving good reasons.

Hi,

I chmod'd everything in the home directory including the .ssh folder to 700. This unfortunately didn't help, do you have any other ideas? why are those rsa keys being referenced in the debug output if they don't exist?

Ant

MensaWater · 06-18-2012, 12:52 PM

Its just checking to see if they exits. The -1 on each is telling you they don't.

Do you have XP's firewall set to allow inbound connections to port 22?

Have you verified the directory permissions for BOTH the target user on XP and the source user on the host from which you're launching the ssh?

suicidaleggroll · 06-18-2012, 12:56 PM

What Cygwin version are you running?

I've never been able to get the sshd server working properly on the new version of Cygwin (v1.7) under Win XP. The old Cygwin (called "legacy" on their site, I believe it's v1.5) works fine on XP, and the new Cygwin works fine on Win 7, but the new Cygwin has major sshd problems on XP in my experience.