KB ID 0001322 

Problem

I’ve lost count of the number of times this has happened to me! Most of my colleagues prefer to use the ASDM for remote management, but if (like me) you work at command line, then sometimes people <ahem> forget to generate the RSA keypair when deploying a firewall. Then even if SSH access and AAA is setup correctly, you still can’t get in via SSH. Instead you see the following;

RoyalTS and RoyalTSX: ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host.

PuTTY: PuTTY Fatal Error: Server unexpectedly closed network connection.

SecureCRT: Connection closed.

OSX/Linux: ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host.

Now at command line you can fix this with a ‘Crypto Key Generate RSA Modulus 2048‘ command, but you can’t get to command line only ASDM.

Solution

On older versions of the ASDM you could generate the keypair in the Identification Certificates section (well you still can but only if you are also generating a certificate request file). So, as we are command line warriors, lets use the ASDM’s command line!

Tools > Command Line Interface > Multiple Line 

[box]

conf t
crypto key generate rsa modulus 2048 noconfirm

[/box]

Send > Wait a couple of minutes and try again.

REMEMBER: I’m assuming you have SSH setup correctly if not, see the following article;

Cisco ASA – Allow Remote Management

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

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