SSH Connection refused in DigitalOcean & not sure how to fix it? Bobcares has your back.

At Bobcares, we offer solutions for every query, big and small, as a part of our Server Management Service.

Let’s take a look at how our Support Team recently helped out a customer when SSH Connection refused in DigitalOcean.

How to resolve error: SSH Connection refused in DigitalOcean

SSH is a protocol network that helps server administrators in accessing the server from an unsecured network safely. It is one of the best ways to access remote Linux servers. Furthermore, it is a part of most Linux distributions by default.

However, sometimes the connection request may be refused. This is when we run into the commonly seen error “SSH connection refused in DigitalOcean”. This message goes out to droplet owners when the request is denied by the host. Interestingly, there are four causes behind this specific error.

• SSH Service Connection Fails
• Wrong SSH Port Selection
• Restriction of the firewall
• Wrong Host IP Address Selection

Cause & Fix: SSH Service Connection Fails

In this scenario, the SSH service relies on sshd daemon in order to listen to incoming connections. Furthermore, it also handles terminal connections, user authentication, and so on. If the service crashes, it leads to a connection failure, resulting in an SSH connection refusal error in Digital Ocean servers.

According to our Support Techs, we can take care of this by identifying the root cause behind the service failure The reason may vary from disk errors, traffic impales, DDoS attacks, to resource breakdowns, and so on.

If the backend service fails or is not responding, killing the process and restarting the service can be effective. For instance, we can run the following command to restart the SSH service:

systemctl restart sshd

After that, we can use the following command to ensure SSH is up and running:

sshd.service – OpenSSH server daemon

If successful, we will get an output similar to the one below:

Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/sshd.service; enabled)

Active: active (running) since Mon xxx-xx-xx xx:xx:xx GMT; x days ago

Cause & Fix: Wrong SSH Port Selection

Selecting the wrong SSH Port is another reason behind the SSH Connection refused error in DigitalOcean. In case you are accessing your servers via the wrong port, you are likely to wind up with this error message.

Our Support Teams suggest correcting the SSH port in order to get rid of the error. This involves accessing the droplet through a console and checking the SSH configuration file initially. By default,the SSH configuration file is located at /etc/ssh/sshd_config.

Once we open the file, we have to look for the Port Parameter and change the Port. Alternatively, we can also use the netstat command to check the SSH port in use.

Cause & Fix: Restriction of the firewall

Another reason behind the SSH connection refused error is incorrect firewall configurations. Our Support Techs recommend checking the firewall rules initially. Then we have to evaluate the connectivity to the SSH port from the external network with the following command:

telnet IP PORT

Here, we have to replace IP and PORT</strong with the droplet IP address and the SSH port respectively.

Cause & Fix: Wrong Host IP Address Selection

The last possible reason behind the SSH connection refused error would be an incorrect IP address or IP conflict. In other words, if multiple droplets use the same IP address, the error pops up.

Our Support Team recommends navigating to PTR Records under Networking in the Manage section in the DigitalOcean control panel to resolve the IP conflict.

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Conclusion

At the end of the day, any one of the four fixes recommended by our skilled Support Engineers at Bobcares will help us take care of the error: SSH Connection refused in DigitalOcean.