[ale] Weird ssh problem

[Ben Coleman]

On 2/4/2025 9:09 PM, Ben Coleman via Ale wrote:
> Through Fiverr, we've got a Vietnamese developer doing some web work for 
> us.  I've set up an Ubuntu 24.04 server to host the web sites he'll be 
> working on.
> 
> Problem is, he can't ssh in to the servers.  For example, I've given him 
> a simeon@<hostname> account, and I can log into it just fine.  When he 
> tries to ssh in, in the auth.log I see 'Failed none for invalid user 
> simeon@<hostname>'.  The fact that I do see his attempts on my server 
> tells me the host name is correct.  Thing is, I do have a simeon user on 
> the server, and as I said, I can ssh into it from my machine.  He's 
> using both putty and filezilla to try to ssh in.  We've tried the same 
> thing using another account on the server (one for one of the web sites) 
> and we get the same error.
> 
> The only thing I can think of so far is that somehow his end might be 
> inserting into the username part of the ssh target a character that 
> isn't showing up in the logs.  But I'm not sure what would cause that, 
> nor, of course, how to fix it.

Ok, I've got more info.  He's running mint 22.1, which is based on 
Ubuntu 24.04, which is what I'm using on the server.  If he uses ssh, it 
makes the connection ok.  If he uses putty or filezilla (which is what 
he prefers to use), it fails with an 'invalid user' message, but when I 
look at the server logs, the username looks correct.

I presume that putty and filezilla have their own code for the ssh 
protocol, rather than using the openssh libraries.  He needs something 
like filezilla.

Any more ideas?

Ben
-- 
Ben Coleman oloryn at benshome.net | For the wise man, doing right trumps
http://oloryn.benshome.net/     | looking right.  For the fool, looking
Amateur Radio NJ8J              | right trumps doing right.