[OpenIndiana-discuss] ssh sessions timing out?

[James Carlson]

Gary Gendel wrote:
> Back on topic... My OpenIndiana ssh service seems to take a long time to
> connect with a client (long delay before the password prompt is
> displayed).  It happens most of the time and feels like a network
> timeout issue.  How can I figure out what it's waiting for?

That sounds like a very common (and not Solaris-specific) network
symptom: check your reverse (IN PTR) DNS records and/or /etc/hosts,
/etc/nsswitch.conf, and /etc/resolv.conf files.  The usual reason this
happens is that the sshd process (the server) attempts to look up the
canonical host name for the incoming connection, and since the address
isn't known or the DNS resolver is misconfigured, it takes a long time
for the server to give up trying to get a name for the client.

The test for this, on the server side, would be to do something like this:

	% getent hosts 192.168.254.200

... but replace that address with the address of the client.  If that
query doesn't return immediately with a useful answer (such as
"192.168.254.200 dhcp-200"), that's what's wrong.

-- 
James Carlson         42.703N 71.076W         <carlsonj at workingcode.com>