UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I've got openssh installed but when i try to ssh to my machine i get a "port 22: connection refused" message.

Do I need to add something to the hosts.allow file to allow ssh access in?

I'm running Mandrake 8.1

I think it can be the iptables or ipfiltering that block your connection,
try to check their configuration or check the configuration of portmap
also try to modify the hosts.allow and hosts.deny.

Also you can try to disable (for testing) iptables, ipfiltering and
portmap Etc. (if any)

What are the entries on your log files? A
"connection refused" means that your ssh daemon is not running.

Try port scanning your system. Check for port 22 whether it is
closed or not. (Get nmap).

you're right.. ssh isn't running.. how do I turn it on?

just start sshd and put it in your startup directry or in your config file like rc.conf (depends on what system you run)

Another way for automatic start you can try to place this script on your /sbin/inet.d, name it sshd, and set symbolic links K20sshd and S20sshd in /sbin/init.d/rc3.d to this script. (If you had ssh already installed, just replacing the script will do the job; the symlinks will already be there).

Code:

#! /bin/sh
#
# start or stop the secure shell daemon (ssh)
#
#/sbin/init.d/sshd

case "$1" in
    start)
        if [ -x /usr/sbin/sshd ]; then
            echo "starting ssh daemon."
            /usr/sbin/sshd
        fi
        ;;
    stop)
        echo -n "stopping ssh daemon:"
        killproc -TERM /usr/sbin/sshd
        echo
        ;;
    *)
        echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop}"
        exit 1
esac

exit 0

Type /sbin/init.d/sshd start to start the daemon.

Ok i tried to start sshd by typing in 'service sshd restart' and I got the error:

Could not load host key: /etc/ssh/ssh_host_key
Could not load host key: /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key
Could not load host key: /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key
Disabling protocol version 1. Could not load host key
Disabling protocol version 2. Could not load host key
sshd: no hostkeys available -- exiting.

How do i create the host key?