My other boss, R, wanted a new site added to the server down in Miami. No problem, it's not something I haven't done before. So I go through the steps needed to add the site, and in this case, the site requires its own IP (Internet Protocol) address (because of the group its in). Not a problem—just pick one of the currently unused addresses, add it to the network interface and there we go. Done, I log out to do other things (like post pictures of Casa New Jersey [1]).
Well, there's a slight problem. The Miami server is also the one that my sites are stored on, and when I went to log back in when trying to post the previous entry, I got an error I've never seen before:
ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host
Uh oh.
I can pull up websites, so that's fine. But ssh? FTP (File Transfer Protocol)?
Nope. Can't log in.
I make multiple attempts, from several different locations across the Internet, trying to log in but the server is not letting me log in.
I do a Google search [2] on the error, and it's heartening to see that this isn't a rare problem at all. But further reading doesn't reveal a solution to my particular problem. No, I didn't change /etc/hosts.allow or /etc/hosts.deny and it was working earlier when I added the site and IP address—
IP address. I added an IP address to the network interface.
And I'm guessing that was enough to throw sshd into suspicious mode and refuse logins.
Well, fine. I knew the solution—restart sshd (and the FTP server—apparently that was having fits too). But how? I can't log in.
Ah, but there is the power pole. Log in to the power pole (through a <cough> <cough>control panel<cough> <cough>) and power cycle the outlet the server is on. Not a great solution, but hey, it'll save me a trip down to Miami.
So I call C, who is responsible for the power pole setup. But well … there's a snag. Since the last debacle [3] the IP address of the power pole was supposed to be updated, but he wasn't sure if it was.
Great.
But C needs to get with our network engineer to actually determine that, so until tomorrow (well, later today) no one will be able to log in to the server.
Sigh.