ok, now that i'm diving deeper into ssh i have now come across something that is screwing me.

ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host

has anyone seen this before, and if so, how do i fix it?

i started up portsentry on a box so that i could learn about my firewall and it's listening abilities. now it won't let me back in. i shut portsentry down, still nothing. i put my workstation in the .ignore, as stated by the file, still nothing. i've looked into the sshd_config and i don't have any clues.

i have a kvm so i can get into the box to change things around, yet this is really starting to get me.

thanks.

edit: if i go into another machine i can log into the firewall without any problems. could the problem be that i did a nmap on the firewall from my workstation? i can go from the firewall to the workstation without any problems also.

It looks like the portsentry box is blocking connections from the workstation. Likely portsentry added a firewall rule when you nmaped it. Run "iptables -L" and see if a rule turns up that looks like it's blocking the workstation, and remove the offending rule.

I've never tried portsentry; hopefully this will help until someone with more experience responds.

Lyle

i took a look at the chains, there are none listed in the rule sets.
input, output, forward. nothing listed below them except what/where things should be going. nothing to do with ipaddresses.

i've done a search in the o'reilly ssh book about it and can't find anything. i've shutdown portsentry, and nothing, i've restarted ssh, and nothing. i even did a hard reboot seeing if that would help and still nothing.

thanks.