ssh login problem

[Spectre]

Hi all. I a have kind of a noobish problem, since i'm new to the whole linux world and i'm ashamed to say i couldn't find a clear answer thus far. I'm running Debian kernel version 2.6.18.3 and the thing is i can't connect with Putty or WinSCP3 to it and i don't know where the problem resides. I am not using a proxy, each computer has a separate connection. In the past i've been using Fedora Core 4 with the Gnome graphical interface and it was very simple to turn off the firewall so that i could ssh it but now that i've changed the OS it's a little difficult moreover since i'm using text mode exclusively. I tried using the lokkit firewall application and it encounters a fatal error "Module ip_tables not found. iptables v1.2.11: can't initialize iptables table 'filter' : iptables who? (do you need to insmod?) Perhaps iptables or your kernel needs to be upgraded" I've tried apt-get upgrade and nothing upgrades. Does anyone have a clue? Please help me, i don't know where else to turn. Much obliged

[anomie]

Not really enough info to go on here. There are some basics to check out to get started.

Is sshd really running/listening on the port you think it is? Try

netstat -atn | grep ':22\>'

(Make sure you type it exactly - or copy/paste.) If that does not produce results, you probably need to start sshd.

If it does show that it's running, you may need to poke a hole in iptables to let connections pass through. One way to do this is from the command line; something like

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT

should do the trick.

Note that this will not survive a reboot. So you're going to need to familiarize yourself with some of the tools and best practices in debian to configure your firewall appropriately.

[Spectre]

Thank you for your quick answer. I know that i have to familiarize myself with the firewall notions and such and only through the preocess of trial and error will i ever succed in getting it up an running thoroughly. Still, when i run "netstat -atn | grep ':22\>'" it states "tcp6 0 0 :::22 :::* LISTEN" but when i try to wirte the iptables rule "iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT" it's still the same error about Module ip_tables not beeing found. Oh well, i'll get to reading now. Thanks a million for shedding some light .