sshd

[profetas]

Wrong again
It gives 0.0.0.0 because it has not matched any host (or IP) so it says it has blocked 0.0.0.0 which is my defaul
setting to

hosts.deny
ALL:ALL
which is the same as
ALL:0.0.0.0ENY

Now I will try to block only the host that I want to allow.

[thehorse13]

if all is sound network wise, this is what you should do:

hosts.allow

sshd: IP or network : ALLOW

hosts.deny

sshd: ALL: ALL

No restart of the service is needed. These rules will work immediately.

[profetas]

I get the following

ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host

I am starting to think that the problem may be in somethingelse

[cacosapo]

of course it was working before, with nothing default host. files and firewall disabled....
i hope that you have tested that BEFORE start trying....
just an idea...

[IKnowNot]

if I do
hosts.deny
ALL:ALL

and hosts.allow

ALL:ALL


it will accept any connection meaning that the hosts.allow is read last.

incorrect.

If this works, great! You are on the right track but your reasoning is flawed.

( did you read the pm I sent yesterday ? )

The hosts.allow file is read first. If a rule matches then the process is accepted and never reaches the hosts.deny file. If not, it then goes to the hosts.deny file. If a rule matches in the hosts.deny file the process stops there, because it matched a deny rule. If no rule in hosts.deny matches, then the process is accepted. That is why you need the “ ALL: ALL” in hosts.deny. It is the default policy to stop everything you did not specifically allow in the hosts.allow file. ( as you can imagine you can get very, very creative with these files but it is easy to make mistakes when you try to. Best to keep them as simple as you can )

As I said, if what you did in the above quote works, great. It just means your syntax is wrong in the hosts.allow file. If it did not work then it did not work before including the hosts.* files. Your problem is elsewhere.