Question

can't ssh remotely, ssh port is closed from outside

Posted September 2, 2014 12.6k views

I was able to ssh in remotely to my droplet yesterday. I didn’t change anything but I can’t do it today.
I use the standard WordPress on Ubuntu 14.04 droplet.

I can ssh locally back to the server using the droplet console.
I’ve tested from other IP (using http://www.infobyip.com/sshservertest.php ) and it doesn’t work either.
Web server on port 80 works.

The firewall seems to be empty:

ipchains -L
Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination

Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination

I also checked /var/log/kern.log when I tried to connect, nothing.
I tried to restart the droplet, didn’t help.

I’m kind of lost what else should I try
Is there a firewall front of my droplet which might block my ssh?
Is there any other diagnostic you could recommend to locate the issue?
I would appreciate any help.

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szeri
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szeri

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5 answers
neomorfeo September 2, 2014

Have you tried if your sshd server it’s running?

the second thing, if it’s running, ensure you are accesing with root or other user. If user is root, maybe you have configured that doesnt’t allow root access using ssh directly on sshd configs.

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Brants September 2, 2014

What happens when you try to make the SSH connection? Does it just timeout?

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szeri September 2, 2014

Yes, It just times out.
sshd server is up and running and listening on port 22:

netstat -plant | grep :22
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:22                  0.0.0.0:*                   LISTEN      2851/sshd
tcp6       0      0 :::22                       :::*                   LISTEN      2851/sshd

Also, ssh from console works:

telnet localhost 22
Trying ::1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_6.6.1p1 Ubuntu -2ubuntu2

The support say they can access ssh. It’s weird because I tried from different IPs and never works. If anyone keen to try it would you please check it and share the results? 178.62.45.184

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szeri September 2, 2014

OK, I can ssh in now. It seems it’s some DNS IP address resolution issue. When I ping (or ssh to) using domain name it shows an IP which is not the IP of my droplet and that’s why the ssh is not working.

What confused me that even the IP from ping is incorrect, the request from browser using the domain name is somehow reaching the server. Because of that I wrongly assumed that trying to ssh with domain name is reaching the correct IP too.

I’m going to look a bit more into this DNS issue now, thanks for the tips anyway.

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szeri September 2, 2014

OK, figured out what’s going on. The whole confusion came from my DNS setup.

The @ record is set up as an URL redirect. This apparently using my domain name provider’s server and returning their IP.

The A record set to www.mydomain.com which has the proper IP and ssh works with it.

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