ssh Connection refused, stuck at "debug1: Local version string"

Question

I'm trying to connect to my Redhat AWS instance with a port other than 22.

This command works: ssh -i my.pem -p 22 [email protected] But this command does not:ssh -i my.pem -p 8157 -vvv [email protected]

The second command outputs:

OpenSSH_7.6p1, LibreSSL 2.6.2
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config
debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 48: Applying options for *
debug2: ssh_connect_direct: needpriv 0
debug1: Connecting to X.X.X.X port 8157.
debug1: Connection established.
debug1: key_load_public: No such file or directory
debug1: identity file my.pem type -1
debug1: key_load_public: No such file or directory
debug1: identity file my.pem-cert type -1
debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_7.6

but then just hangs. On the server I'm trying to connect to, however, when I run nc -l 8157 I can see

SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_7.6

If I take out the -vvv part I just get a quick "Connection refused" error.

When I log into the machine and run ssh -p 8157 -vvv ec2-user@localhost

I get the following output:

OpenSSH_7.4p1, OpenSSL 1.0.2k-fips  26 Jan 2017
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config
debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 58: Applying options for *
debug2: resolving "localhost" port 8157
debug2: ssh_connect_direct: needpriv 0
debug1: Connecting to localhost [127.0.0.1] port 8157.
debug1: connect to address 127.0.0.1 port 8157: Connection refused
ssh: connect to host localhost port 8157: Connection refused

Any idea what's going on?

Answer 1

This command works: ssh -i my.pem -p 22 [email protected]

But this command does not: ssh -i my.pem -p 8157 -vvv [email protected]

---

Your other side may have opened port in the firewall, but...

Since port 22 works, your server listens on that port.

Re-configure your server to listen on whatever port you wish.

---

You can do that in the file:

/etc/ssh/sshd_config

With the following setting:

Port 8157

Don't forget to restart your SSH daemon afterwards.

Answer 2

In my case, I figured out that the ssh deamon (sshd.service) turned off, on the local machine. Check if this is the case:

sudo systemctl status sshd.service 

if it return "inactive state":

sudo systemctl start sshd.service