paramiko Incompatible ssh peer (no acceptable kex

Question

I'm getting the following error when trying to ssh to a Cisco ACS device using the paramiko library. I've used paramiko in python without issue, and I can ssh to this box from the command line, or using putty without issue. I've turned on debugging and copied the info here. Please let me know if you can help me out.

import paramiko
import sys
import socket

try:
    paramiko.common.logging.basicConfig(level=paramiko.common.DEBUG)
    sshConnection = paramiko.SSHClient()
    sshConnection.set_missing_host_key_policy(paramiko.AutoAddPolicy())
    sshConnection.connect('server',username='username',password='password')
except paramiko.BadAuthenticationType:
    sys.stdout.write('Bad Password!\n')     
    sys.exit()
except paramiko.SSHException, sshFail:
    sys.stdout.write('Connection Failed!\n')
    sys.stdout.write('%s\n' % sshFail)
    sys.exit()
except socket.error, socketFail:
    sys.stdout.write('Failed to open socket\n')
    sys.stdout.write('%s\n' % socketFail)
    sys.exit()

and the debug output returned:

DEBUG:paramiko.transport:starting thread (client mode): 0x14511d0L
INFO:paramiko.transport:Connected (version 2.0, client OpenSSH_5.3)
DEBUG:paramiko.transport:kex algos:['diffie-hellman-group14-sha1'] server key:['ssh-rsa'] client encrypt:['aes256-cbc', 'aes128-cbc', '3des-cbc'] server encrypt:['aes256-cbc', 'aes128-cbc', '3des-cbc'] client mac:['hmac-sha1'] server mac:['hmac-sha1'] client compress:['none', '[e-mail]'] server compress:['none', '[e-mail]'] client lang:[''] server lang:[''] kex follows?False
ERROR:paramiko.transport:Exception: Incompatible ssh peer (no acceptable kex algorithm)
ERROR:paramiko.transport:Traceback (most recent call last):
ERROR:paramiko.transport:  File "build\bdist.win32\egg\paramiko\transport.py", line 1546, in run
ERROR:paramiko.transport:    self._handler_table[ptype](self, m)
ERROR:paramiko.transport:  File "build\bdist.win32\egg\paramiko\transport.py", line 1618, in _negotiate_keys
ERROR:paramiko.transport:    self._parse_kex_init(m)
ERROR:paramiko.transport:  File "build\bdist.win32\egg\paramiko\transport.py", line 1731, in _parse_kex_init
ERROR:paramiko.transport:    raise SSHException('Incompatible ssh peer (no acceptable kex algorithm)')
ERROR:paramiko.transport:SSHException: Incompatible ssh peer (no acceptable kex algorithm)
ERROR:paramiko.transport:
Connection Failed!
Incompatible ssh peer (no acceptable kex algorithm)

I've made sure I have the most recent versions of pycrypto and paramiko installed.

Answer 1

This may not help the OP's situation, but hopefully it may help someone else with the same error.

I ran into a situation where one script would SSH into a system just fine, but another similar script would fail with the same

paramiko.SSHException: Incompatible ssh peer (no acceptable kex algorithm)

error.

The situation turned out to be the shebang line at the top of my script:

#!/usr/bin/python

Would fail, while

#!/usr/bin/env python

would succeed.

I'm using virtualenvs on my system, so the failing /usr/bin/python version was using the older Paramiko version installed on the system, whereas the /usr/bin/env python version was using the newer Paramiko installation in my virtualenv.