Strange issue with SSH on Libreelec 11

    Hi all,

    I am testing Libreelec 11 on an old S905X box (Zen 11 pro) and I installed it in a new separate micro SD card.

    Libreelec starts and boots up, everything is fine except for the wireless but I am not bothered about that as I am able to use the LAN instead.

    However, when I try to enable SSH on the first setup wizard, save the configuration and check the config again to set up the password, it goes back to Off.
    I changed the SSH password, enabled SSH again, and yet it's still Off.

    I added "ssh" to the uEnv.in file but, while I can ping the IP address from my laptop, I always get a connection refused on port 22, like if the service is unable to run.

    I am out of ideas, any suggestions on what to try next? Is this a known issue? Thanks!

    Quote from Bub4

    Try

    ssh-keygen -R IP.of.the.device

    I guess you connected to the same device before via ssh?

    I am getting a connection refused as opposed to ssh issues in connecting to the box itself.
    But it was still a good point to check and no, I haven't used ssh with that IP before:

    ````

    ssh-keygen -R 192.168.1.X

    Host 192.168.1.X not found in /Users/X/.ssh/known_hosts

    Quote from Bub4

    Would have been too easy. Sorry I can‘t help further I‘m afraid. Good luck

    No worries, it was a good shout! The issue is puzzling me. I think I will try to attach a keyboard and run it in textmode to see if I can see the ssh daemon running and, if not, try to start one manually (I am excluding a local firewall issue). Unless there are other things I can check!

    So this seems to be a bug to me but I wanted to confirm with you before I raise one (and I find the instructions to do so).

    I enabled textmode, nosplash and removed quiet, to watch the boot.

    This is what I was presented with (sorry for the dusty micro-screen, all I had to work with a keyboard):

    Basically, sshd was trying to restart all the times.

    I checked the journal and there was a no such file or directory error while attempting to create the SSH keys:

    Checking the folders, ssh folder was missing under /storage/.cache:

    I created the folder, restarted ssh and it seems to be fine so far:

    Is that a known issue? If not, how do I report it?
    Thanks!

    I'm struggling to recall seeing that kind of issue before so I'd chalk it up to something random on your box (or SD card). If it was a proper bug in the OS we'd expect to see a large number of user reports. Odd.. /shrug

    Maybe there isn't much people using S905X with the latest version, but that is me speculating at this point! You know better for sure.

    I used BalenaEtcher to write the image the SD card and, truth is, I am testing various *Elec distributions and Armbian, but I had the SSH issue only with this one.

    Is the ssh folder already created in the image file or is it created at the first runtime? Is there a way to expand/mount the image to inspect it? This is what I used: LibreELEC-AMLGX.arm-11.0.3-box.img.gz

    You can use the LE USB/SD app to create the image, or Win32DiskImager, or other similar apps. You can experiment with another SD card. If it's some kind of repeating issue when you use a different app and/or card then it's something massively obscure but local to your specific box. Active install stats for the project show me that there are enough people using the AMLGX image and/or with S905X devices to know it's not a general issue with the image.

    Thanks for the feedback chewitt, I appreciate it. I am planning to install this image in another microSD, so I will report back if I can still reproduce the issue, in case someone has the same problem.

    Quote from mglae

    Should be automatically created by tmpfiles at boot. Please post logs if this occurs again (accessible via samba share without ssh)

    Interesting. The /storage/.ssh and /var/empty directories which are included in the same file do exists without any manual intervention from my side. I am planning to flash other microSD soon.

    mglae I flashed another microsd, set up the uenv.ini file as follows:`

    Code
    dtb_name=/dtb/meson-gxl-s905x-p212.dtb
bootargs=boot=UUID=1507-4017 disk=UUID=f426ba96-ae14-42f3-8d9f-269a100f407b quiet nosplash ssh systemd.debug_shell=ttyAML0 console=ttyAML0,115200n8 console=tty0

    And I can reproduce the problem.

    However, if I add "textmode" to bootargs after writing the microsd, ssh is able to start.
    I also used a diverse laptop (windows) and LibreELEC USB-SD Creator this time.

    I enabled Samba but that doesn't seem to work either, so unable to extract the logs.
    I am kind of accepting that is a problem with my box at this point :(

    Edited once, last by r4w (September 24, 2023 at 5:19 PM).