Hi guys,

I'm having a small problem with my server, more exactly with its SSH daemon. When I try to connect to the server via PuTTY (yes, the address etc is correct), I it tries for a while and then gives me an error: "Network error: Connection reset by peer.".

I think the reason for such behaviour is that the last time I tried to connect to the server before starting to get this error was not a "full" connection. I only opened PuTTY and pressed the Open button but didn't enter any username when requested. I only closed PuTTY. Might it be that the old connection attempt still lingers on and this is why the server won't let me connect?

How can I solve my problem the easiest way?

Help is appreciated!


BTW, it'd be great if I didn't have to connect my screen to the server

At work, we used to use need a ssh client on a windows 98 machine to connect to weather-star. I didn't have luck using putty from our network, but ssh32 worked.

If you have access to your server, you could restart the ssh daemon as root. service sshd restart

If your public key is changed that can cause a problem. The ssh server will refuse the connection of the key provided does not match the key used the first time you connected. There will be a known-hosts file that it refers to when it receives a connection request. I think that file name is common for linux and windows, but I'm not sure. Take a look in the files on the client computer and see what it says it's own public key should be, and what it says the servers public key is. Maybe print them both out (from the two machines) and compare them. If the public key of either of the machines has changed, this would be interpreted as a possible man-in -the-middle attack, and the connection would be refused.
One other thing to check is if the key files in /etc/ssh/ and ~/ .ssh/ have the correct permissions. If somehow, a private key is world readable, the ssh server will refuse to make a connection.

I had re-installed linux on my home desktop computer. As a result, the keys had changed, and I couldn't make a connection from my laptop. I simply deleted the entries, in the laptop computers ~/.ssh/known-hosts file, refering to the desktop, and was able to make a new connection.