Otdfbt

I'm trying to use an ssh tunnel from my office machine to my home machine, and get an error when I try to use it.

What I'm doing is starting one shell like so:

ssh -gL 12345:my.home.domain:22 my.home.domain

This is giving me a proper shell, no problem. What I normally do then is ssh to my home machine through this office machine, like so:

ssh -p 12345 127.0.0.1

This has always worked for me, until last week, when I set up a new system on my home machine (switching from Ubuntu to Debian). Now I get an error. I can still open up my initial ssh connection, but when I try to use that tunnel, I get (on the office machine) this error:

ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host

Also, when that happens, the open shell that I have the tunnelling set up through gets this line spat out at it:

channel 3: open failed: connect failed: Connection timed out

At which point, I'm at a loss. If any more info is needed, I'll be happy to post it.

============= further to that ==============

After fiddling around further, I've found that I'm getting a different response from the server (my home machine that is) when I try to telnet in on the various ports. If I try:

telnet my.home.domain 22

I get this back:

Trying <my ip address>...
Connected to <my domain>.
Escape character is '^]'.
SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_5.5p1 Debian-6+squeeze2

Which is what I would expect. After setting up the tunnel though, and then telnetting to that, I see this response:

Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to 127.0.0.1.
Escape character is '^]'.

============== and further still ==================

As per kbulgrien's suggestion, here is the output from the client machine with the -v option:

ssh -vp 24600 127.0.0.1
OpenSSH_5.9p1 Debian-5ubuntu1, OpenSSL 1.0.1 14 Mar 2012
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config
debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 19: Applying options for *
debug1: Connecting to 127.0.0.1 [127.0.0.1] port 24600.
debug1: Connection established.
debug1: identity file /home/jacob/.ssh/id_rsa type -1
debug1: identity file /home/jacob/.ssh/id_rsa-cert type -1
debug1: identity file /home/jacob/.ssh/id_dsa type -1
debug1: identity file /home/jacob/.ssh/id_dsa-cert type -1
debug1: identity file /home/jacob/.ssh/id_ecdsa type -1
debug1: identity file /home/jacob/.ssh/id_ecdsa-cert type -1
ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host

Maybe if you have more then ssh 10 sessions waiting for insert the password, you have that kind of error, i remember that was recent ssh bug, if you would verify this, use the command below

for i in 1..15;do ssh -fNt pippo@remote.server.com & >/dev/null ;done

Something like this happened on a recent install. In this situation /etc/hosts.deny existed and had no settings that explicity denied access, so the circumstances seem similar. It was necessary to alter /etc/hosts.allow to add something like:

sshd: 192.168.127.0/255.255.255.128

The IP details need to be adjusted to your needs, or are replaced with ALL if there is no concern with allowing ssh from everywhere.

After making the changes, stop and restart sshd.

Upvoted answers to following question provide more examples.

SSH hosts.deny and hosts.allow

Here is someone else's testimony that links the error message with the solution.

How To Fix : ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host problem when logging in with SSH

I had the same problem and in the end solved the problem by correcting the /etc/network/interfaces:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static

or

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

without that config I never get reverse connection to my ssh tunnel.

In my case, I had to insert to /etc/ssh/sshd_config of the gateway machine the following lines:

Match User <username>
 GatewayPorts yes

See more details here

Hope this helps!