ssh: Could not resolve hostname [hostname]: nodename nor servname provided, or not known

I am trying to set up a VPN with a Raspberry Pi, and the first step is gaining the ability to ssh into the device from outside my local network. For whatever reason, this is proving to be impossible and I haven't the slightest clue why. When I try to ssh into my server with user@hostname, I get the error:

ssh: Could not resolve hostname [hostname]: nodename nor servname provided, or not known 

However, I can log into the server with,

ssh user@[local IP]

The server is a Raspberry Pi Model B running the latest distribution of Raspbian and the machine I am trying to connect to it with is a Macbook Pro running Mavericks. ssh was enabled on the Raspberry Pi when I set up Raspbian.

I have perused Stack Overflow for hours trying to see if anyone else had this problem and I have not found anything. Every ssh tutorial I find says that I should just be able to set it up on the remote machine and log in from anywhere using a hostname, and I have never had success with that.

If you're on Mac, restarting the DNS responder fixed the issue for me.

sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

I had the same issue connecting to a remote machine. but I managed to login as below:

ssh -p 22 myName@hostname

or:

ssh -l myName -p 22 hostname

Recently I came across the same issue. I was able to ssh to my pi on my network, but not from outside my home network.

I had already:

• installed and tested ssh on my home network.
• Set a static IP for my pi.
• Set up a Dynamic DNS service and installed the software on my pi. I referenced these instructions for setting up the static ip, and there are many more instructional resources out there.

Also, I set up port forward on my router for hosting a web site and I had even port forward port 22 to my pi's static IP for ssh, but I left the field blank where you specify the application you are performing the port forwarding for on the router. Anyway, I added 'ssh' into this field and, VOILA! A working ssh connection from anywhere to my pi.

I'll write out my router's port forwarding settings.

>(ApplicationTextField)_ssh     (external port)_22     (Internal Port)_22     (Protocal)_Both     (To IP Address)_192.168.1.###     (Enabled)_checkBox

Port forwarding settings can be different for different routers though, so look up directions for your router.

Now, when I am outside of my home network I connect to my pi by typing:

>ssh pi@[hostname]

Then I am able to input my password and connect.

In my case I was trying ssh like this

ssh pedro@192.168.2.179:22 

when the correct format is:

ssh pedro@192.168.2.179 -p 22 

If you need access to your VPN from anywhere in the world you need to register a domain name and have it point to the public ip address of your VPN/network gateway. You could also use a Dynamic DNS service to connect a hostname to your public ip.

If you only need to ssh from your Mac to your Raspberry inside your local network, do this: On your Mac, edit /etc/hosts. Assuming the Raspberry has hostname "berry" and ip "172.16.0.100", add one line:

# ip           hostname
172.16.0.100   berry

Now: ssh user@berry should work.

I had the same issue, which I was able to resolve by adding a .local to the host name, ala ssh [email protected]

For me, the problem was a typo on my ~/.ssh/config file. I had:

Host host1:
  HostName 10.10.1.1
  User jlyonsmith

The problem was the : after the host1 - it should not be there. ssh gives no warnings for typos in the ~/.ssh/config file. When it can't find host1 it looks for the machine locally, can't find it and prints the cryptic error message.

If your command is:

$ ssh -p 1122  path/to/pemfile user@[hostip/hostname]

You will also face the same error

ssh: Could not resolve hostname [hostname]: nodename nor servname provided, or not known

when you miss the option -i /path/to/pemfile of ssh

So Command should be:

$ ssh -p 1122 -i path/to/pemfile user@[hostip/hostname]

I had the same problem: The address shown in Preferences -> Sharing -> Remote Login didn't work and I got a '... nodename nor servname provided, or not known'. However, when I manually edited the settings (in Preferences -> Sharing -> Remote Login -> edit) and enabled "Use dynamic global hostname", it suddenly worked.

I needed to connect to remote Amazon server

ssh -i ~/.ssh/test.pem -fN -L 5555:localhost:5678 [email protected]

I was getting the following error.

ssh: Could not resolve hostname <hostname.com>: nodename nor servname provided, or not known

Solution For Mac OSX

Pinging the host resolved the issue. I am using Mac OSX Seirra.

ping hostname.com

Now problem resolved. Able to connect to the server.

Note: I tried this solution also. But it didn't work out. Then ping resolved the issue.

It seems that some apps won't read symlinked /etc/hosts (on macOS at least), you need to hardlink it.

ln /path/to/hosts_file /etc/hosts

This was happening to me when trying to access Github. The problem is that I was in the habit of doing:

git remote add <xyz> ssh:\\[email protected]......

But, if you are having this error from the question, removing ssh:\\ may resolve the issue. It solved it for me!

Note that you will have to do a git remote remove <xyz> and re-add the remote url without ssh:\\.

I have the exact same configuration. This answer pertains specifically to connecting to a raspberry pi from inside the local network (not outside). I have A raspberry pi ssh server, and a macbook pro, both connected to a a router. On a test router, my mac connects perfectly when I use ssh danran@mypiserver, however, when I use ssh danran@mypiserver on my main router, i get the error

> ssh: Could not resolve hostname [hostname]: nodename nor servname > provided, or not known

Just as you have gotten. It seems, the solution for me at least, was to add a .local extension to the hostname when connecting from my mac via ssh.

So, to solve this, i used the command ssh [email protected] (remember to replace the "danran" with your username and the "mypiserver" with your hostname) instead of using ssh danran@mypiserver.

To anyone reading this, try adding a .local as the suffix to your hostname you are trying to connect to. That should solve the issue on a local network.

Try this, considering your allowed ports. Store your .pem file in your Documents folder for instance.

To gain access to it now all you have to do is cd [directory], which moves you to the directory of the allotted file. You can first type ls, to list the directory contents you are currently in:

ls
cd /Documents
chmod 400 mycertificate.pem
ssh -i "mycertificate.pem" [email protected] -p 80

I got this error by using a .yml inventory file in ansible that was not properly formatted. For multiple hosts in a group, each hostname needs to end in a hard colon ":". Otherwise ansible runs the host names together and produces this ssh error.

I had the same problem after testing Visual Studio Code with remote-ssh plugin. During the setup of the remote host the software did ask me where to store the config-file. I thought a good place is the '.ssh-folder' (Linux-system) as it was a ssh-remote configuration. It turned out to be a bad idea. The next day, after a new start of the computer I couldn't logon via ssh on the remote server. The error message was 'Could not resolve hostname:....... Name or service not known'. What happen was that the uninstall from VSC did not delete this config-file and of course it was than disturbing the usual process. An 'rm' later the problem was solved (I did delete this config-file).