SSH / SCP problems between Solaris and OS X

[chicken]

Ever since our Solaris sysadmins started using a commercial version of SSH, we have been unable to SCP files from our OS X (Panther) machines to the Solaris machine, and have had to go the other direction:

solaris machine > scp me@osx.machine.edu:Desktop/foo .

This is fine, I can live with it. People say there's no way around this annoying difference between commercial and open source SSH.

The problem is that today, even going in that direction stopped working. (It has worked for months, years even).

Now I get this error (when executing the command shown above) --

warning: Connecting to osx.machine.edu failed: Connection Refused
scp: warning: child process (/opt/local/bin/ssh2) exited with code 2.

Does anyone know why this is suddenly happening? Our Solaris sysadmins have not announced any sudden Solaris updates, and there hasn't been an OS X Panther update in a while either. (Of course, sometimes they do forget to tell us things.)

Comments

[paulv.livejournal.com]

Try it with -vvv.

Your Solaris admins are fools from switching away from (I assume) OpenSSH to (I assume) ssh.com's version of ssh.

[kerri9494.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, but OpenSSH is open source, and thus you can't rag on someone if something goes wrong, as you can with a commercial product -- you have to take care of it yourself. I'm just sayin'.

[paulv.livejournal.com]

Oh, I totally rag on the OpenSSH developers, like, all the time. The difference is that I don't have to pay them and they don't have to listen to me (and most of my ragging is under my breath anyway ;). On a more serious note, the basic stuff that you need a ssh daemon to do, OpenSSH does fine, and has done fine without any problems for years. Maybe problems with the more esoteric features that few people use have been spotty at times, but the basics have always worked well for me.

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

If you had met Kerri in person and heard her say this kind of thing before, you'd know immediately that she was being ironic and mocking, and agrees with you -- the thing she was mocking is the kind of thing the MBA-heads in management like to spout, straight-faced.

[paulv.livejournal.com]

Meh. I hate text-based communication the Internet.

Sorry, Kerri.

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

Yes, tone of voice is almost completely lost in the medium.

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

Bwaaahahaha!

I sure hope they ain't readin' this blog!

[rms2.livejournal.com]

Is it possible that ssh on the Solaris machine is simply not listening on port 22? If your admins were dumb enough to switch away from OpenSSH, they might have lso goofed the configuration...

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

Nope -- I found out that my OS X machine is somehow at fault. I tried scp-ing to a different office Mac than my own, and it worked fine.

So what the bleedin' F happened to my own Mac? If you have any notions, do share!

[rms2.livejournal.com]

Were you ever able to nail this down? If so, what was the solution?

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

Still not -- haven't had time -- easy enough to get around the problem by SCPing a file to the Macserver first, and then from there to the Unix machines (which one has to do when off-campus regardless, due to which machines are open to the outside world and which aren't). ARGH.