Ubuntu – SSH to VM rejecting password, works from virt-manager console

sshUbuntuvirt-managervirtual-machines

First of all, I'm sorry if there is a duplicate post somewhere. I searched for a while but none of the posts I found fixed my problem.

It's fairly annoying. I created a new VM on our network and when using virt-manager I can log into the VM fine with the username and password. When I try to ssh to the VM from anywhere else it rejects the password, but I know the password is correct. I've even changed it multiple times to make sure its correct.

The address I'm ssh'ing to is definitely pointing at the right VM as well, I've tested all this.

It's still usable, but the virt-manager console is very limited so the sooner I can get to the bottom of this the better. VM is running ubuntu 12.04 btw.

EDIT 1
Checked the auth.log and all I'm getting is "sshd[29304]:Connection closed by 'server.ip.address' [preauth]". I also tried allowing logging in as root, and even turned off password auth altogether in sshd_config and still nothing! I then turned on "AllowEmptyPasswords", still a whole lot of nothing.

Best Answer

I would recommend, assuming there is no firewall between you and the server, using the virt-manager console to run an sshd (in debug mode) on a different port.

This will allow you to see a more complete log of the connection, including why it refused to let you in:

 `which sshd` -d -p 27

(The use of backticks t find the sshd is just me being lazy - the whole path needs to be specified for modern OpenSSH)

The output will be something like:

# `which sshd` -d -p 27
debug1: sshd version OpenSSH_6.0p1 Debian-3ubuntu1
debug1: read PEM private key done: type RSA
debug1: Checking blacklist file /usr/share/ssh/blacklist.RSA-2048
debug1: Checking blacklist file /etc/ssh/blacklist.RSA-2048
debug1: private host key: #0 type 1 RSA
debug1: read PEM private key done: type DSA
debug1: Checking blacklist file /usr/share/ssh/blacklist.DSA-1024
debug1: Checking blacklist file /etc/ssh/blacklist.DSA-1024
debug1: private host key: #1 type 2 DSA
debug1: read PEM private key done: type ECDSA
debug1: Checking blacklist file /usr/share/ssh/blacklist.ECDSA-256
debug1: Checking blacklist file /etc/ssh/blacklist.ECDSA-256
debug1: private host key: #2 type 3 ECDSA
debug1: rexec_argv[0]='/usr/sbin/sshd'
debug1: rexec_argv[1]='-d'
debug1: rexec_argv[2]='-p'
debug1: rexec_argv[3]='27'
Set /proc/self/oom_score_adj from 0 to -1000
debug1: Bind to port 27 on 0.0.0.0.
Server listening on 0.0.0.0 port 27.
debug1: Bind to port 27 on ::.
Server listening on :: port 27.
debug1: Server will not fork when running in debugging mode.
debug1: rexec start in 5 out 5 newsock 5 pipe -1 sock 8
debug1: inetd sockets after dupping: 3, 3
Connection from 172.17.172.42 port 52877
Bad protocol version identification '' from 172.17.172.42

This was the log when I used telnet to connect and just hit return to close the connection - you should get a more complete error. I

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