Orange Pi Zero 2W SSH Issues on New Install Solved

[exoskeletondestroyer]

Hello Armbian community,

Firstly, thank you for the amazing work that you do. Having Armbian has made the setup process so simple, and I really appreciate that

I'm completely new to the world of SBCs and Armbian (but not Linux), and this issue had me stumped for a long time. I wanted to share the solution for those who are in the same position as me, as I only found this on Raspberry Pi resources.

Sorry if this has already been covered elsewhere in the forums - my searches didn't show any answers from here, and additionally, I keep getting time-locked (forced to wait 30sec) for every forum search.

 

The model of OPI I have is the Orange Pi Zero 2W 4G RAM. I installed the Armbian Bookworm image (Armbian_24.2.6_Orangepizero2w_bookworm_current_6.6.28_minimal.img.xz).

The SD card I'm using is a 32GB SanDisk card that is A1 speed. That was a lucky purchase considering I knew nothing of SD cards when I bought it - I just got the cheap thing, lmao.

 

The Problem & its Symptoms

The issue I initially had was that when I would try to SSH into my OPI, it would hang for a really long time after inputting user credentials before spitting out something or other about a broken pipe (in other words, timed out because of no user input).

I could ping the OPI and it would return the appropriate results:

PING 192.168.1.154 (192.168.1.154) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.1.154: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=127 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.154: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=4.15 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.154: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=2.13 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.154: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=3.97 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.154: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=5.19 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.154: icmp_seq=6 ttl=64 time=2.80 ms
^C
--- 192.168.1.154 ping statistics ---
6 packets transmitted, 6 received, 0% packet loss, time 5007ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 2.133/24.182/126.853/45.926 ms

Unlike a lot of other posts on the forum where the host was unreachable, it wasn't a problem in this instance.

 

I made sure to run `# systemctl enable --now ssh` for the SSH service when setting up for the first time. When I'd try to SSH in, `systemctl status ssh` would say the session was open for my client. Unfortunately, on the client side that was never reflected, but it did show that there wasn't any other kind of network problem at play.

The same problem happened without any firewall enabled, so that was not the problem either.

 

I reinstalled the OS 3 times, all times using Balena Etcher, though the first time I did it directly from the .img file rather than the .xz archive. The issue was still not fixed after all those times.

There was the option to reset the OpenSSH host keys but I thought every reinstall I did effectively did that anyway, so I didn't bother. :>

 

After a bit of searching elsewhere, I discovered this: https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/143142/has-anyone-solved-raspberry-pi-zero-w-ssh-client-loop-send-disconnect-broken

Basically, "...open-ssh has relatively recently begun using quality-of-service (QoS) metrics to try to optimize its performance based on the expected behavior of the connection, and its default is to assume a reliability that the Pi Zero W's tiny wifi simply can't deliver; as a result it gets caught waiting for lost packets rather than retrying."

 

The Solution

As outlined in the linked post:

1. Open /etc/ssh/sshd_conf with your editor of choice

2. Append `IPQoS 0x00` to the file (append meaning add at the end). This disables the quality of service metrics

3. Restart SSH service (`# systemctl restart ssh`)

 

I can now SSH into the OPI nicely. Yay!

  ___  ____  _   _____             ______        __
 / _ \|  _ \(_) |__  /___ _ __ ___|___ \ \      / /
| | | | |_) | |   / // _ \ '__/ _ \ __) \ \ /\ / /
| |_| |  __/| |  / /|  __/ | | (_) / __/ \ V  V /
 \___/|_|   |_| /____\___|_|  \___/_____| \_/\_/

Welcome to Armbian 24.2.6 Bookworm with Linux 6.6.28-current-sunxi64

No end-user support: community creations

System load:   2%           	Up time:       19:30	
Memory usage:  4% of 3.84G  	IP:	       192.168.1.154
CPU temp:      46°C           	Usage of /:    7% of 29G    	

[ Menu-driven system configuration (beta): sudo apt update && sudo apt install armbian-config ]

Last login: Thu May  9 18:06:47 2024 from 192.168.1.104
orangepi@orangepizero2w:~$

I hope this helps anyone who comes across it, and that it wasn't something extremely obvious that I just missed... ^^;

But also, maybe it could be fixed in new Armbian images (if possible)? This could stump other newbies if left as is.

Edited May 9 by exoskeletondestroyer
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