Trying To Setup SSH Between Two Tumbleweed PCs Over Wireless - No Route To Host

  1. Latest Tumbleweed fully updated on both PCs.
  2. Both PCs connected to wireless access point supplied by my building.
  3. Both PCs have firewalld turned OFF (for testing purposes.)
  4. Both PCs have SSH enabled and running on port 22.
  5. I can ping each PC from the other, but I get:
    From 10.128.128.128 icmp_seq=1 Packet filtered

When I try to test if port 22 is open using netcat with “nc -v -z 10.73.127.64 22”, I get:
nc: connect to 10.73.127.64 port 22 (tcp) failed: No route to host

What I’m trying to do is set up SSH so I can use SFTP and SSHFS and Dolphin Fish protocol between the two PCs so I can transfer files easily between them, preferably using a GUI such as Remmina.

Does the “filtered” response from the ping indicate that the wireless router in the building has a firewall which is blocking connections between PCs in the building? I wouldn’t be surprised if that is the case. The service is supplied by an outside vendor to the building and the building is full of sketchy people.

If not, is there some other reason I can’t connect to the other PC?

If I can’t connect wirelessly, how do I go about setting up a direct cable connection between the two, specifically while maintaining my wireless connection? A link to a explanatory resource would be helpful.

Without knowing more about your network environment, but you mentioning some service provider managed wireless implemenation, it may be likely that Wi-Fi client isolation is employed perhaps.

If the machines are physically close enough, a direct ethernet connection is the way to go. If not, you could consider a shared VPN (via internet) such that both machines can effectively tunnel traffic between themselves.

Have you allowed forwarding on your LAN in your router’s firewall?
If you don’t have admin rights to the current router/access point, consider buying your own router.

The OP already mentioned that both are connected to the same Wi-Fi system. The router is managed by an external provider. They are assigned to the same subnet anyway , but client isolation likely employed here.

Yes, that’s the conclusion I’ve come to.

OK, so I connected the two machines by a Cat5 cable. I previously had a cable interface to a Comcast router so I already had an interface defined in Network Manager. I set it to “link-local” on both machines. With the firewall disabled, they can ping each other and nc can connect to port 22.

So I re-enabled the firewall on one machine. Ping still works. nc does not connect. I’m back to no route to host.

What more do I have to do to make that machine accept a connection?

And also, what do I have to do to allow the wired connection to remain for direct connection over SSH, while still allowing the wireless connection to take precedence for Internet access?

OK, apparently the issue on that machine was that all the interfaces are by default assigned to public and when I enabled ssh, ssh was allowed on most of the other zones but not on public. So I assigned ssh to public and now I can connect using nc.

While my cable interface is up, however, my wireless won’t connect. How do I enable wireless Internet access to continue to work with the cable interface connected? I believe it has something to do with routing priority, but I don’t know how to set that up in openSUSE.

OK, managed to figure that out. I set the connection priority in Network Manager for both interfaces to 0, now both are connected at the same time.

So I guess all I have to do now is set up the SSH configs, for which I have some documentation.

And that was a simple matter of using Dolphin’s FISH protocol to access the other machine. I can now transfer files back and forth easily.

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.