The performance of your VPS depends on various parameters, so it’s essential to choose the VPS properly, opting for the services of reliable providers as well as fitting the parameters of your VPS well to the requirements of your project.
However, no matter how good your choice has been, your system can sooner start to unravel, to have troubles, such as connection problems. And you’ll have to deal with them in some way. Of course, you can always ask your service provider for additional support, but if you prefer to solve problems on your own, it might be interesting for you to check out the following article, where we’ll address several troubles of the kind.
The reasons for the connection to fail
There may be various reasons for connection failures: errors in RDP or Putty, breaking the server connection, troubles with the internet connection or with the hardware, and errors in the operating system of the server. Let’s have a closer look at the problems that happen on Windows VPS and then at the Linux-related problems.
The connection problems of Windows VPS
If you have chosen Windows VPS, you may encounter various problems that are characteristic of this particular OS and have well-established patterns of solving. In the following section, we’ll have a look at a few problems and their solutions.
Insufficient permissions
Sometimes, when you need to access certain parts of your operating system, the connection breaks drops due to the insufficiency of inner permissions. To adjust this, you have to give access to the terminal service through remote desktop services.
You have to go to the Group Policy Object Editor tool and open the following path Computer Configuration \ Windows Settings \ Security Settings \ Local Policies \ User Rights Assignment.
Then find Allow log on through Remote Desktop Services and select the groups needing permissions.
RDP default port
Sometimes when you try to access the server through a port other than the RDP default port, the connection is dropped, because only connection through the default server is allowed in the firewalls settings. To change this, set the Remote desktop port back to default 3389.
Then open the registry editor and access the remote desktop port number key with this address:
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations\RDP-Tcp.
In the port number key, change the base option to decimal and set the value data as 3389. Restart the system.
Double user access
In some scenarios, for example, if you have an identical username to some other user of the server or there is a limited number of users with limited access, you get the following report from RDP “Another user is connected to the remote desktop”. To solve this problem, got to All Programs > Administrative Tools > Remote Desktop Services > Remote Desktop Session > Host configuration. Here, remove the restriction posed by the “each user to a single session” option.
Excessive bandwidth consumption
If the system isn’t properly set up, this may lead to some applications using a lot of bandwidth even if the latter is not really required in your particular case. This causes a reduction of the internet speed up to a full loss of the connection.
To solve this issue, you need first of all to close the applications consuming excessive bandwidth. Also, reducing graphic parameters, like using a display with lower resolution and color depths and disabling additional visual effects may reduce the bandwidths consumption. Additionally, you can adjust the image quality setting in Display and Experience section of Remote Desktop connection settings.
Linux connections problems and their solutions
Now, let’s take look at a few common problems that appear when we work with Linux.
Blank screen on putty when logging in
Usually, in these cases you see the message of the kind: “PuTTY Network Error: Software caused connection abort”.
It may be the consequence of a page that was plugged in into putty and not accessed for a long time.
To solve this problem, configure the sshd_config file through root access.
Use VIM or NANO command to find the ClientAliveInterval file.
With one of these commands, change the value of the file to 60:
vim /etc/ssh/sshd_config
nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
After it, restart your VPS.
Putty fatal errors
Usually, fatal errors in putty contain the following messages:
- agent forwarding is required to connect using a public key via SSH TCP
- public-key authentication is not permitted via SSH TCP
To deal with the first warning, go to Connection > SSH > Auth> Allow agent forwarding, thus in fact allowing agent forwarding.
In the second case, access TCP service and turn on the public-key authentication option.
Multiple connections
If for some reason you tried to connect a few times in a row, for example, if any of the tools like email tool, SSH tool etc. have wrong login credentials, your IP address may be blocked by such security apps as Fail2Ban or LFD. In this case, you should call your hosting provider and ask them to check the firewall log and reset your login details.
PuTTY Network Error: Connection timed out
To solve this one, go to the general configuration of PuTTY. Find the Connection option in the Category list section. Change the value in Seconds between keepalives to 20.
Conclusion
We’ve just had a look at a few common problems that may occur with connection on your Windows or Linux VPS. We hope that this article was useful and you will successfully fix any problems with your VPS. If you haven’t purchased any yet, we recommend checking out ubuntu vps by HostZealot and you won’t regret it. Take care!
Also Read: The Cloudways Review: Which is the best managed Cloud Hosting?
