Steps to Install Dropbear SSH Server

Dropbear is a small SSH server using in Linux distributions. It is an open source software. Dropbear SSH completely runs with SSH version 2 protocol, it never supports SSH version 1. Dropbear is an advanced version of open SSH, it only uses low memory and processor resources.

 

Install Dropbear

1) We need to enable Dropbear repo on the server to install Dropbear.

$ wget http://ftp-stud.hs-esslingen.de/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm

$ rpm -Uvh http://ftp-stud.hs-esslingen.de/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm

2) Install Dropbear.

$ yum install dropbear

3) Now Dropbear is successfully installed on the server. Configure the dropbear.

$ vi /etc/init.d/dropbear

Edit following parameter on the file.

OPTIONS=” -p 222″

 

Replace OpenSSH with Dropbear

After installing Dropbear we need to add Dropbear to startup (chkconfig), then restart the server.

$ chkconfig dropbear on

$ service dropbear restart

Remove OpenSSH from server.

$ yum remove openssh-server

If service won’t correctly start up when changing port, we need to update SELinux to the new port number.

$ semanage port -a -t ssh_port_t -p tcp 222

If semanage doesn’t exist on server, you need to install it.

$ yum install policycoreutils-python

 

Common error when connect with dropbear:

‘Not able to connect “No route to host”‘

The problem is, by default linux is configured to allow port 22 to access SSH. In here we need to change this to dropbear port number 222.

To change this:

# vi /etc/sysconfig/iptables

Here I am using 222 port for dropbear SSH, so we need to enable port 222 in iptables.

#  iptables  -A INPUT -m state –state NEW -m tcp -p tcp –dport 222 -j ACCEPT

Then restart iptables so the changes take effect.

# service iptables save

 

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