SVN Connection problem

Posted by Max Dunn Tue, 12 Dec 2006 17:16:00 GMT

We use RubyForge to host MaxWiki. A few days ago, I started having problems connecting to our Subversion (SVN) repository on RubyForge. In Eclipse, I would get the message:

svn: Cannot connect to 'svn+ssh://maxdunn210@rubyforge.org/': 
There was a problem while connecting to rubyforge.org:22

If I tried to use the SVN Repository Explorer in Eclipse, it would report something like:

Cannot find folder "

Running the svn command line would produce:

ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host
svn: Connection closed unexpectedly

Since I had been struggling recently with some other SVN problems and had updated Eclipse to use the latest Subclipse version 1.1.9, I thought the problem had something to do with this upgrade. Also Wido had been struggling with problems connecting to the RubyForge SVN repository on his Windows box and finally got everything working fine when he setup a convoluted arrangement to use public key authentication. However, since these instructions didn’t apply to my Mac, and I knew that it worked before, I kept banging my head against the wall trying different things.

Finally this morning, I ran into a note on RubyForge that described this exact error.

It turns out that RubyForge uses a service called DenyHosts to to help thwart SSH server attacks. Somehow my IP got on this list, and that was what was causing this problem!

Since I use DSL with a dynamic IP, it is possible that the person that had this IP before me was trying to hack and got the IP on the blacklist. Or maybe it was just my futzing with the upgrade that triggered this. In any event, I just reset my DSL modem to get a new IP, and – voila – I can access RubyForge SVN again!

Probably if I setup Eclipse and SSH to use public key authentication, I wouldn’t have this problem, but that will have to wait until next time.

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  1. Mat Schaffer said 98 days later:

    Just for the record I had the same symptom on a totally static IP. It cleared up in a few minutes w/o my intervention. So I think there may be other causes for this issue.

    Thanks for the info!

  2. Daniel Sim Lind said 331 days later:

    This is happening for me too. It seems to come and go and isn’t connecting to my IP address as far as I can tell. I am accessing via the plugin/install mechanism within ruby on a windows machine. Got rspec trunk through fine and then moments latter I can’t get the rspec for rails trunk. I get the message: svn: Connection closed unexpectedly. I guess I’ll keep retrying it.

  3. Daniel Sim Lind said 331 days later:

    No sooner written than it came right! Mat Schaffer is correct. Your success was probably a co-incidence.

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