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georgie_vb
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SSH / console access troubleshooting help

I am unable to SSH or get a local console on esxi6.5 hosts.

Vcenter Security Profile:

Incoming connections, 22 allowed from all

Direct Console UI Running

ESXi Shell Running

SSH Running

  Lockdown Mode Disabled.

When I ssh, I get a "Server unexpectedly closed network connection" Wireshark capture shows 3 way handshake completes and packet #4 has fin flag from the esxi host. SSH is listening but does not get far enough to even negotiate encryption.

The above is caveated in that the ssh and esxi shell services keep stopping on me.

2. Local console problem is all I get is a blank screen when trying to use the local ESXI console. I have no problems with the DCUI, but once hitting alt-F1 all I get is a blank screen. Now if I choose to view logs, that works, which seems to use the same ALT-F1 console. I can toggle between logs and DCUI using the F keys.

I'm a bit stuck here, cannot SSH into box, ssh services will not stay running, and unable to get any kind of display trying to use local console. (Monitor and Keyboard directly attached to ESXi host)  I have full management of the device via Vcenter and Esxi Web console. Any thoughts or suggestions on where else I can look to resolve this issue? This box has been hardened per DISA STIGS with a bunch of lockdowns to the SSH configuration file. I am wondering if there may be a problem with the sshd_config file but I am unable to get to it to inspect.

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georgie_vb
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Never mind the service, stopping happened to see that one from below post, it was UserVars.ESXiShellTimeOut had a value.

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georgie_vb
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Never mind the service, stopping happened to see that one from below post, it was UserVars.ESXiShellTimeOut had a value.

dc_cb
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This helped me a lot today. We were having the same issue. After reading this, I recalled a support engineer from our HCI vendor added a value here to troubleshoot an issue. It didn't fix the issue and he never changed it back. I set the UserVars.ESXiShellTimeOut value to 0. Started the services and now they stay up.

Thanks for that info.

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