Need Help with Blink Shell

[voranis]

Very rusty former Unix developer here, now disabled. I often need to run a few commands on my MacBook and it is easier to use my iPad to do so when I am in bed. I had Blink Shell working a week ago with my iPad and MacBook. I could connect via ssh, even run vim and emacs inside the ssh session. I could even connect with ssh using the host name I created in Blink’s configuration for the userid and IP address. But I wanted to try mosh because of its advanced capabilities. I installed the mosh-server on my Mac, and now I not only cannot connect using mosh, I can no longer connect using ssh, either. Both fail with a connection timeout, socket error. I don’t get any more error info than that. I am using an iPad Air with an M3 chip running iPadOS 18.3.2 and a MacBook Air 2022 with an M2 chip running Ventura 13.4. I know these are older OS versions but I am not in a position to upgrade yet until I can get backups setup, and besides, Blink Shell was working with ssh with these versions at first, just a week ago. I can’t be sure the installation of mosh-server on my MacBook caused the problem, but it was after installing that that ssh in Blink stopped working. I rebooted my Mac, and I deleted and reinstalled the Blink Shell app on my iPad, but the connection errors are still occurring.

[carloscabanero]

I don’t think this is an issue from installing mosh-server, maybe just a coincidence and maybe something got misconfigured.

We need to debug ssh, everything else will follow. A Socket error could be a few different things, but we need to test the connection paths. ssh -vvvv could give us more information. Then make sure the host is reachable (ping and telnet on port 22).

That would be the starting point.

[voranis]

I had already verified ping works. And I had already tried telnet, but it failed. However…I just tried ping again and it said the host was down. I opened my Mac up and now ping is working again. I had previously set “Prevent automatic sleeping on power adapter when the display is off,” on my Mac, but apparently I needed to also set “Turn display off on battery when inactive" and "Turn display off on power adapter when inactive" to “Never” as well. (Goodness! I’m trying to figure out if Unix is just a lot more complicated than it was 25 years ago, or if it’s just macOS that has a gazillion settings.)

I get a connection refused message when I try to telnet from Blink Shell. I already have Remote Login enabled for all users in System Settings on my Mac, so I’m not sure where to go from here.

[voranis]

Additional: since opening my MacBook and changing the two settings “Turn display off on battery when inactive" and "Turn display off on power adapter when inactive" to “Never,” ssh is connecting again. Like I said, I already had “Prevent automatic sleeping on power adapter when the display is off” enabled. The question now is, is ssh working because I changed those additional two settings, or because my MacBook is not sleeping yet? I will have to wait until it goes to sleep again (although maybe it won’t go to sleep now that I’ve changed those additional two settings) and test again.

Although ssh is connecting from Blink Shell to my MacBook now, I tried telnet and it still gets ConnectionRefused, despite having Remote Login enabled for all users in System Settings on the MacBook. I get ConnectionRefused in telnet before even being prompted for userid and password. (I remember using telnet and rlogin a lot in the “old days.”)

Robbie

[voranis]

Update: ssh is now failing to connect again—timing out. I guess my MacBook went to sleep when I closed it despite having all three options I previously mentioned set. Is there no way to keep macOS up when the MacBook is closed? This is my first laptop in over 30 years, and it is the first Unix (or pseudo-Unix) laptop I’ve ever owned, and it’s my first time wanted to connect to a laptop remotely, so I had not anticipated it sleeping being such a big problem.