Transition Technology: Ticket #779: Annesley locked out of puffin?

hours, totalhours changed

chris — Wed, 27 Aug 2014 14:46:17 GMT

hours changed from 0.0 to 0.25
totalhours changed from 0.0 to 0.25

This is what we have in the auth.log:

Aug 27 14:50:09 puffin sshd[31545]: Did not receive identification string from XX.XX.XX.XX
Aug 27 14:50:10 puffin sshd[31549]: Did not receive identification string from XX.XX.XX.XX
Aug 27 14:50:10 puffin sshd[31513]: Invalid user an from XX.XX.XX.XX
Aug 27 14:50:10 puffin sshd[31512]: Invalid user ann from XX.XX.XX.XX
Aug 27 14:50:10 puffin sshd[31512]: Received disconnect from XX.XX.XX.XX: 11: Bye Bye [preauth]
Aug 27 14:50:10 puffin sshd[31513]: Received disconnect from XX.XX.XX.XX: 11: Bye Bye [preauth]
Aug 27 14:50:10 puffin sshd[31577]: Invalid user annesley from XX.XX.XX.XX
Aug 27 14:50:10 puffin sshd[31566]: Invalid user annesl from XX.XX.XX.XX
Aug 27 14:50:10 puffin sshd[31577]: Received disconnect from XX.XX.XX.XX: 11: Bye Bye [preauth]
Aug 27 14:50:11 puffin sshd[31566]: Received disconnect from XX.XX.XX.XX: 11: Bye Bye [preauth]

Where XX.XX.XX.XX is the same IP address as Annesley has used to connect today to wiki:ParrotServer.

It looks to me that you could do with coding usernames into your ~/.ssh/config file, eg:

Host puffin
  Hostname puffin.transitionnetwork.org
  User anewholm
Host parrot
  Hostname parrot.transitionnetwork.org
  User annesley

Then you could simple do sftp parrot and sftp puffin on the command line and you wouldn't need to remember the usernames and would have less to type.

I have unblocked the IP address following PuffinServer#Falsepositives

annesley — Wed, 27 Aug 2014 14:51:06 GMT

my usernames are already coded in to the .ssh/config file

annesley — Wed, 27 Aug 2014 14:52:03 GMT

The following:

Host puffin puffin.transitionnetwork.org
        Hostname puffin.transitionnetwork.org
        IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_tn
        User annesley
Host parrot parrot.transitionnetwork.org
        Hostname parrot.transitionnetwork.org
        IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_tn
        User annesley

Should be changed to:

Host puffin
        Hostname puffin.transitionnetwork.org
        IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_tn
        User anewholm
Host parrot
        Hostname parrot.transitionnetwork.org
        IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_tn
        User annesley

The you should be able to do:

sftp puffin

And:

sftp parrot

chris — Wed, 27 Aug 2014 14:54:18 GMT

I don't understand why did you try connecting as "an", "ann" and "annesley" to Puffin where your username is "anewholm"?

Your username on Parrot is "annesley".

annesley — Wed, 27 Aug 2014 14:58:18 GMT

i don't understand either. i never typed "an", "ann" obviously. the puffin entry in config does not get used.

but for now i need to connect to Parrot. why is that onyl periodically working?

hours, totalhours changed

chris — Wed, 27 Aug 2014 18:01:03 GMT

hours changed from 0.0 to 0.25
totalhours changed from 0.25 to 0.5

Replying to annesley:

i don't understand either. i never typed "an", "ann" obviously.

That is very strange because there were login attempts to the PuffinServer using those usernames which resulted in your IP address being blocked.

but for now i need to connect to Parrot. why is that onyl periodically working?

Because you are only periodically trying with the correct details?

You twice tried using 'anewholm' rather than 'annesley', you tried 34 time using the username "Passphrase", 41 attempts failed because of an invalid password when using keys you shouldn't even be entering a password. The last failed attempts from your IP were ones using 'Passphrase' as the username.

chris — Wed, 27 Aug 2014 18:04:25 GMT

Perhaps if you use a ssh agent so you only need to type your passphrase once per session it would help?

annesley — Wed, 27 Aug 2014 18:11:05 GMT

my command line sftp seems stable.

Dolphin keeps asking for authentication: the username is always 'Passphrase' and password is for decrypting the ssh key. i have no idea why it is only sending a partial username.

chris — Wed, 27 Aug 2014 18:21:53 GMT

Oh crap, I edited a comment 3 above rather than posting a follow up, sorry.

Are you using the command line for sftp or a GUI?

chris — Wed, 27 Aug 2014 18:23:57 GMT

what does your ~/.ssh.config have in it, can you update it to match comment 3 above and let me know if there is anything else in it.

With ssh passphrase authentication you can use a ssh agent so you only need to decrypt your ssh private key once per session (session on your local machine), are you using OSX?

annesley — Thu, 28 Aug 2014 09:00:36 GMT

here is my current .ssh/config now

Host puffin puffin.transitionnetwork.org
        Hostname puffin.transitionnetwork.org
        IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_tn
        User anewholm
Host parrot parrot.transitionnetwork.org
        Hostname parrot.transitionnetwork.org
        IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_tn
        User annesley

(User annesley changed to User anewholm now)

i think that the instability is only happening through Dolphin though. command line does seem much more stable.

annesley — Thu, 28 Aug 2014 09:01:17 GMT

and I am on Ubuntu

annesley — Thu, 28 Aug 2014 10:08:22 GMT

ok, so i think this is probably a problem within Dolphin at my end. potential duplicate issues here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1406703

chris — Thu, 28 Aug 2014 11:22:21 GMT

Replying to annesley:

here is my current .ssh/config now

Host puffin puffin.transitionnetwork.org
        Hostname puffin.transitionnetwork.org
        IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_tn
        User anewholm
Host parrot parrot.transitionnetwork.org
        Hostname parrot.transitionnetwork.org
        IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_tn
        User annesley

The Host lines are still wrong, they should be:

Host puffin
...
Host parrot

i think that the instability is only happening through Dolphin though. command line does seem much more stable.

What is Dolphin?

hours, totalhours changed

chris — Thu, 28 Aug 2014 11:28:03 GMT

hours changed from 0.0 to 0.25
totalhours changed from 0.5 to 0.75

You might be best off using fuse to mount the remote filesystems, eg:

chris — Thu, 28 Aug 2014 11:32:20 GMT

Replying to chris:

The Host lines are still wrong

Actually Host can take multiple patterns, see man ssh_config, so that shouldn't be an issue.

Using fuse is probably the best though as then the remote filesystems will simply appear as local ones.

annesley — Thu, 28 Aug 2014 12:02:04 GMT

ok, thanks for the help.

Dolphin is the KUbuntu (KDE Ubuntu) default file manager. it's been pretty impressive up until now. it may be an un-related issue of course. i haven't done a major release complete re-install for a while...

yep, the fuse option sounds best. i used it a while ago for another server so will try to remember how-to!

ed — Mon, 08 Sep 2014 12:47:10 GMT

Thank you Chris - hope this is sorted now Annesley

status changed; resolution set

annesley — Mon, 08 Sep 2014 13:17:46 GMT

status changed from new to closed
resolution set to fixed

it looks like the problem is at my end, the Ubuntu Dolphin File manager with password encrypted key management. i will install a different file management client at some point and report back. thanks for help so far! :)