On Tue, 7 Jan 2003, Tibbetts, Ric wrote:
> All;
> I have an interesting challenge. Some speculation will be required to
> solve this one!
>
> The situation:
>
> Linux Server sitting in Seattle, I'm in Florida.
> The Linux Server crashed due to a power failure (I know, it needs a
> UPS). When the server came back up, it came up, sans sshd. So I cannot
> get on it to check it out. I also cannot get on to diagnose the problem
> with sshd, because ssh is my only access (kinda a catch-22 isn't it?).
What services do you have available? If everything else is running
properly then you can probably assume that something went wrong only
with the sshd startup. Possible problems could include:
SSH was improperly upgraded ( /var/empty not created, host keys not
properly generated, sshd was turned on in the rc scripts during upgrade).
> Further complicating it: I Have no one on site, that knows spit about
> computers, that can help. The best that can be offered is a pair of
> fingers, that are extremely computer illerate.
>
> Somehow, I need to diagnose the problem, and find a way to fix it.
> Any suggestions will be greatfully accepted.
>
> Any "guesses" on what would be snagging up sshd? All I know is that it
> failes to start, both on boot, and via "service sshd start". I don't
> know what's in the logs, I can't get to them.
>
Have someone log in to the box as root. Type:
sshd -d -p XXXXXX
(where XXXXXX is an accessible and available port)
On your end, type:
ssh -p XXXXXX hostname
This will start a second sshd process that might allow connections. It
will also send debug messages to the console and not background. If you
have a firewall configured you might be able to disable the service for
an open port, say apache, then run sshd on the allowed port.
> I know this is vague, but it's all I have to go on at the moment.
>
> Any suggestions, speculations, "WAGs" will be very greatfully accepted!
>
> Also: Telnet is not installed, so enabling that is not a solution.
If you have the X libraries installed you might be able to start a VNC
session on that end.
>
> Thank you!
>
> Ric
>
> PS: The server is running on Mandrake 8.1
>
>
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