Hi All,

I just recently started setting up my BBS (bbs.vswitchzero.com:1023)
based on Mystic 1.12 A43. Really loving the Mystic BBS platform so far! My setup is running in a 64-bit Debian Linux 9.11 environment. Telnet is working great and everything is stable. The problem is when I try to enable SSH. It works perfectly when running "mis server" but if I run mis as a daemon, I
can't connect via SSH. I've tried both cryptlib 3441 and 345.

It seems to just hang at the negotiation phase like this:
+ 2019.09.25 11:24:57 SSH > Connect on slot 1/10 (x.x.x.x)
+ 2019.09.25 11:24:57 SSH 1-HostName Unknown
+ 2019.09.25 11:24:57 SSH 1-Negotiating SSH session

Eventually the client times out, but mis never closes the connection and any subsequent attempts show up as dupe IPs. The daemon also seems to get into a weird state once this happens. It can't be shutdown via CLI (mis shutdown). I have to do a "kill -9" to stop it and then remove mis.bsy from the semaphore directory manually.

I'd really love to get this working so that callers can use SSH as well. Any ideas or suggestions?

Thanks,
Mike

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

Hello lemonlime!

On 26 Sep 2019, lemonlime said the following...

It seems to just hang at the negotiation phase like this:
+ 2019.09.25 11:24:57 SSH > Connect on slot 1/10 (x.x.x.x)
+ 2019.09.25 11:24:57 SSH 1-HostName Unknown
+ 2019.09.25 11:24:57 SSH 1-Negotiating SSH session

Just a heads up that not all SSH clients appear to work with Mystic's SSH server -- I tried PuTTY on Windows and got some strange error messages (although no hangs like the ones you describe) -- and switched to SyncTERM, which seems to work fine... Maybe something with the ciper support or so of cryptlib, not sure...

Best regards
Zip

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Star Collision BBS, Uppsala, Sweden (21:1/202)

Just a heads up that not all SSH clients appear to work with Mystic's SSH server -- I tried PuTTY on Windows and got some strange error messages (although no hangs like the ones you describe) -- and switched to SyncTERM, which seems to work fine... Maybe something with the ciper support or so of cryptlib, not sure...

Hi Zip, thanks for the reply! I noticed that as well, I've been using
SyncTERM which seems to play well with Mystic. I tried a few other clients including PuTTY, linux shell and the latest Netrunner Alpha. All behave the same way. All of them connect okay when running 'mis server' just not in
daemon mode, which is very weird.

I also tried a fresh install of A43 on an Ubuntu 18.04 VM, which behaved the same way.

Thanks,
Mike

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

Hi Guys :)

On 26 Sep 2019, lemonlime said the following...

Just a heads up that not all SSH clients appear to work with Mystic's server -- I tried PuTTY on Windows and got some strange error message (although no hangs like the ones you describe) -- and switched to SyncTERM, which seems to work fine... Maybe something with the ciper support or so of cryptlib, not sure...

That's interesting. I thought it was just me. I'll have to try out, and maybe publicly recommend using Syncterm for BBS'ing over SSH, which personally, I'm totally afraid of using Telnet with anything but a non-SysOP account and a disposable passwd.

I haven't seen any weirdness when using the SSH client in MobaXterm, and if
you use it for Telnet it pops up a choice the first time you create the
session to choose between PuTTY or CygWin client. Choosing the CygWin doesn't present any issues for me as far as graphics and character rendering.

Hi Zip, thanks for the reply! I noticed that as well, I've been using SyncTERM which seems to play well with Mystic. I tried a few other
clients including PuTTY, linux shell and the latest Netrunner Alpha. All behave the same way. All of them connect okay when running 'mis server' just not in daemon mode, which is very weird.

I also tried a fresh install of A43 on an Ubuntu 18.04 VM, which behaved the same way.

I cannot confirm or deny this behaviour myself, as I haven't actually run it
in daemon mode yet. During my open beta testing I've just been leaving a tmux session running, but based on what you're finding, it looks
like I may be able to expect similar behavior on Deb Bullseye (or any Linux distro, really).

Off the top of my head, and I can't remember which one, but either the SSH or Telnet server when scanned reveals that the server is from APC's UPSes. My immediatte concerns were surrounding just how complete an implementation this might be considering that a shell on a UPS is rarely accessed for configs, so the robustness of the server implementation might not need to include everything that OpenSSH does.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Vger.Cloud - NOMAD Internetwork (21:2/104)

Hello lemonlime!

On 26 Sep 2019, lemonlime said the following...

behave the same way. All of them connect okay when running 'mis server' just not in daemon mode, which is very weird.

Hmm, strange indeed... One would think they should behave the same... :-O

Best regards
Zip

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Star Collision BBS, Uppsala, Sweden (21:1/202)

Hmm, strange indeed... One would think they should behave the same... :-O

Best regards
Zip

Well, it magically started working after installing the latest Linux kernel update! No idea what the problem was, but it seems to work solidly now :)

The only other oddity I see is that the very first SSH connection attempt
fails after starting the daemon. All other attempts are successful after
this. I noticed that g00r00 mentioned that he saw this behavior in his
testing - not a big deal at all.

Thanks for the help, all!

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

Hello lemonlime!

On 27 Sep 2019, lemonlime said the following...

Well, it magically started working after installing the latest Linux kernel update! No idea what the problem was, but it seems to work
solidly now :)

Glad to hear that! :)

Best regards
Zip

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Star Collision BBS, Uppsala, Sweden (21:1/202)

That's interesting. I thought it was just me. I'll have to try out, and maybe publicly recommend using Syncterm for BBS'ing over SSH, which personally, I'm totally afraid of using Telnet with anything but a non-SysOP account and a disposable passwd.

Yeah, I've had a few people complain about not being able to connect with everything from timeouts to emulation detection failures. Seems the choice of client is the problem. Using the 'ssh' command from a Linux terminal seems pretty problematic. I've been telling people to use SyncTERM as it has been really solid with Mystic's implementation of SSH. I hope to start playing around with the latest pre-alpha of NetRunner as well.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: vswitchzero BBS (21:4/162)