Other What's ruining your life right now?

My web host, Tsohost, has absolutely gone down the pan since it was taken over. They had an alleged "DDoS attack" on the server I share, and suddenly SSH stopped working - port 22 was closed. Raised a ticket, "try port 2510."

Port 2510 times out. I tell 'em this.

"The logs say you're trying to authenticate with a private key the server doesn't have. Delete your keys to force password login."

What? I'm getting a timeout, not an authentication error. Whatever, here's the output of me trying SSH set to force password authentication (timeout) and flaming telnetting to port 2510 (timeout). So, can you fix the timeout problem I'm having?

"Here's a screenshot of Cpanel. You'll have to delete these SSH keys to switch back to password authentication.. Let me know if you need further assistance."

Furrfu. Right, fine, log into Cpanel, delete the keys (for which I have the private key right here, 'cos I was authenticating with 'em a flamin' week ago and have changed nothing at my end), try to SSH again: OH LOOK A TIMEOUT I AM ABSOLUTELY AMAZED THAT DIDN'T FIX IT (especially when I know for a fact sshd is set to fall back to password authentication if you don't have a valid private key meaning that it couldn't possibly be a key problem.)

Told him to escalate it to someone who understands how networking works. So far, silence, though the Twitter account has just asked me to try telnetting to the port - which, y'know, I already tried and told them about in the ticket. Hell, I told them about it in the tweet they bloody well replied to.

I really need to get around to migrating to someone blessed with a modicum of Clue.

EDIT:
And I'm in. Because they've whitelisted my IP. Because, what do you know, IT WASN'T A FLAMIN' AUTHENTICATION PROBLEM. Gah!

 

So it was an authentication error

 

I'll bite, because I'm utterly tee'd off with this whole damn week and Tsohost wasting my afternoon was just the icing on a poo-sandwich: no, it wasn't. Authentication happens after a connection has been made; blocking someone at the firewall is absolutely a hundred and ten percent nothing to do with authentication. It was also quite obviously what the problem was from the minute I said "timeout", once they'd checked (I assume they checked) that sshd was actually running.

God only knows what logs he was looking at when he said I was using the wrong SSH key, because if I'm blocked at the firewall I ain't never making into auth.log.

 

The script in front of him at a guess. I'm guessing after they had the DDoS they switched to whitelisting IPs which seems odd to do on the management side.

 

They never had any flamin' DDoS, they're just shoving too many customers onto too few servers to increase their profit margins.

 

ahhh, ye olde ISP approach.

 

Holy balls, it continues: "actually, you were not blocked." SO WHY DID WHITELISTING ME FIX IT, THEN?

 

On my to-do list, but working 12 hour plus days seven days a week at the moment means I just don't have time to migrate the sites anywhere.

 

It's not the domains - they're hosted elsewhere. It's the sites themselves: I need to take a dump of the database, set up WordPress, import the dump, transfer the files, fix everything that's broken - it's non-trivial. I'll get around to it one of these days.

 

Hey, if somebody wants to do it for me, even better. Still got to find the somebody, though - and I'm only paying, what, £8 a month, so my budget ain't exactly getting anyone hot and bothered for my business.