Okay this is weird.

Since last week I can no longer putty and sftp to my servers.

I can't figure out why as shell and gftp and even my iphone can connect to all of my servers.

It must be a stupid windows XP thing, but I don't know what.

Any one with any ideas? It just kicks off the connection after its e
verified the ssh keys.

I even have got allow passwords and with putty I see the login, can even get to put in a password before I get kicked. Sometimes it just kicks me before I have a chance to do anything.

Again its not my servers, as my iphone logs in perfectly over ssh and shell, from the same XP notebook tethering the same IP even.

Thanks!

Any idea?

Do you see any messages in /var/log/secure or /var/log/messages ?

In secure I see a unsuccessful sshd pam unix for user root as it then says session closed for user root.

But I just ssh in from my iPhone as root, but it says for pam unix session opened for user root by uid=0

I am sure a package update did it, but as to what I don't know. It does not appear a protocol issue as to why mostly I get a chance to enter root and password before the connection drops.

It's not password / auth issue and only from Windows. Next I try on my wireless as I am atleast on the LAN side, but then again ssh from my iPhone is over WAN.

I also checked ws_FTP and putty it's not dropping off due to changed or corrupted server ssh key either

Scratch the updated packages. I just tried my friends fc7 server, its the same.

So its XP related, effecting putty and ws_ftp.

I can try my Windows 7 notebook later, but that is all the windows machines I have. All my fedora machines still can ssh and sftp with gftp.

Any idea's how to get around or test this?

Sorry, it's out of my knowledge base... Anyone else?

Just to clear things up:

From your iPhone you can connect to the server with root:password but the same login fails when you are using your Windows client? BTW, have you tried running it from within a virtual machine?

Hi Biggles,

Definitely. I am simply using passwords no ssh keys and right in as root.

What confuses me even more so, is when the XP notebook on wireless on my LAN (the server is inside our LAN address range) it works, both putty and ws_ftp

Now what confuses me completely, iphone or notebook no updates or config touch since it just stopped working on Friday! ANd yes being Windows I rebooted the notebook.

Its not the tethering as my notebook accesses sites and does everything, just ssh port 22 weirdness!

it sounds like an IP related problem. Do you assign the same IP for your notebook via WLan and Cable?
Maybe an IP is blacklisted? Is something in hosts.deny?
Or a local Firewall blocks things? Try to disable it.

Okay I fixed it. I tried everything and last resort was to reboot my iphone

That fixed it.

Now goodness knows why ssh directly off the iphone was working, but putty and ws)ftp via the notebook using the tethered connection (its iphone to USB cable).

What is weird the notebook was working with websites, everything but putty and ws_ftp.

But when they worked off my wireless I knew it was something via the iphone.

I then turned on WAN on my iphone and it still did not work.

Considering this I then rebooted the iphone

I normally get uptime unstopped from iphone update to update it just does not crash and despite the reboot seems exactly the same except now its working for putty and ws_ftp

Its weird and a good one for anyone tethering via an iphone who has this unexplainable issue!