Disturbing Computer Tricks
This is the second time since I got the media box up and running again that my ability to SSH from it to my publickey-only access server has disappeared. First time I got it up and running, and the media box crashed in the middle of my tests. When I rebooted it, my changes to /etc/hosts and /home/colomon/.ssh had just disappeared.
I redid all those changes and got everything working over the weekend. Then this morning I tried to use rsync over SSH to back up my MP3 collection from the media box to the server (in preparation for setting up a cron job to do it weekly). I screwed up the rsync command, and hit control-C as soon as I realized it was copying too much. Immediately after that SSH has stopped working again. Though at least this time the changes I made earlier to the media box are still there.
Update: Okay, this is really awkward. As nearly as I can tell, the server has stopped accepting SSH connections, even after a reboot. This is more than a little awkward, considering the server is headless and there is no other way to log into the machine without lugging a monitor across the basement and making room to plug it all in...
Mystery Solved: My errant rsync command seems to have changed the permissions on my home directory; and when sshd detected the permissions were not correct, it refused to let me log in. Basically, what happened is I typed "rsync -avz Albums/ colomon@melissa:" -- the slash after Albums did me in, because it meant rsync tried to make /home/colomon on melissa match Albums on the media box, including permissions.
I redid all those changes and got everything working over the weekend. Then this morning I tried to use rsync over SSH to back up my MP3 collection from the media box to the server (in preparation for setting up a cron job to do it weekly). I screwed up the rsync command, and hit control-C as soon as I realized it was copying too much. Immediately after that SSH has stopped working again. Though at least this time the changes I made earlier to the media box are still there.
Update: Okay, this is really awkward. As nearly as I can tell, the server has stopped accepting SSH connections, even after a reboot. This is more than a little awkward, considering the server is headless and there is no other way to log into the machine without lugging a monitor across the basement and making room to plug it all in...
Mystery Solved: My errant rsync command seems to have changed the permissions on my home directory; and when sshd detected the permissions were not correct, it refused to let me log in. Basically, what happened is I typed "rsync -avz Albums/ colomon@melissa:" -- the slash after Albums did me in, because it meant rsync tried to make /home/colomon on melissa match Albums on the media box, including permissions.