PowerConnect 6248

[Brian McNally]

We have a couple 6248s and they've had similar problems. I found that it 
was possible to crash the SSH daemon just by sending enough traffic to 
it. I've subsequently turned off SSH on the switch and only manage it 
via the serial console or web interface. The SSH bug may have been fixed 
in a later firmware upgrade, but I'm not really sure as I haven't had a 
chance to apply the latest firmware yet. I've reported at least 7 bugs 
to Dell about these switches in the last year, some serious (like this 
one), with little evidence that the bugs are being taken seriously.

--
Brian McNally

Matthias Saou wrote:
> dellpoweredge at semantico.com wrote :
> 
>> The switch is working fine. The firmware is 2.1.0.13. It's just the ssh 
>> daemon that's died. Health status doesn't say there's any problem though 
>> on the admin. Anyone else had a similar problem?
> 
> I had similar, yet worse, problems on some 6224 which had their ssh
> daemon wide open to the Internet (bad idea in the first place,
> yeah...). Even with the latest firmware at the time, it kept happening
> regularly and the only solution was to manual powercycle the devices.
> 
> Once they were changed to be on a private subnet only, no more
> problems. My guess is that some external scans must have been able to
> crash the ssh daemon and the admin part of the switch, since the access
> through the serial console port stopped working too. The rest (packet
> forwarding and routing) was still working...
> 
> Matthias
>