ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed

Question

In university I normally SSH into the CS server. However today I keep getting the following error: ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host. SSHing with -v flags gives me the following.

OpenSSH_5.9p1, OpenSSL 0.9.8r 8 Feb 2011

debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh_config

debug1: /etc/ssh_config line 20: Applying options for *

debug2: ssh_connect: needpriv 0

debug1: Connecting to ... [...] port 22.

debug1: Connection established.

debug3: Incorrect RSA1 identifier

debug3: Could not load "~/.ssh/id_rsa" as a RSA1 public key

debug1: identity file ~/.ssh/id_rsa type 1

debug1: identity file ~/.ssh/id_rsa-cert type -1

debug1: identity file ~/.ssh/id_dsa type -1

debug1: identity file ~/.ssh/id_dsa-cert type -1

ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host

I've tried editing the hosts files but that won't help. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

This can happen when you have too many different keys to offer. You can easily fix this by adding IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_keyname to your ~/.ssh/config entry used for this connection and a global IdentitiesOnly yes. This can look like this:

~/.ssh/config

Host foo
    hostname server.example.com
    User myUserName
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_keyname

Host *
    IdentitiesOnly yes