Alternative to ssh for remote server
 

Hi folks. Not sure if this qualifies as a security question but here is my situation.

My servers both running Fedora were inaccessible via ssh. I would get the prompt which meant that sshd was running but whenever I entered my password, the session would freeze then time out.

I have faced this before and have never quite figured out what the root cause is. At this point, i was wondering if there is another alternative method to log in in the event ssh fails short of enabling telnet because of its security implications?

Anything along the lines of socat or netcat?

Thanks

Mosh makes the initial connection to the remote system via ssh, so sshd still has to be up and accessible on the remote system. Mosh uses ssh for authentication, and to start the mosh-server on the remote system. In the Op's case, ssh wasn't working, so neither would Mosh.

Given that you mention security, this might be out of the question, but have you considered SNMP?

SNMP on Linux can be set up to run/query external scripts. You COULD write a script to start telnet, and use SNMP to fire it off, thus opening the port when needed, if SSH is unavailable. Since it's your script, you could also have it try to bounce the SSH service first, and touch a temp file, so that if it's present when you issue that SNMP command again, it'll fire up telnet.

For reference:
http://www.net-snmp.org/wiki/index.p..._shell_scripts
https://access.redhat.com/site/docum...Extending.html