Can no longer connect to private Minecraft server

I set up a Minecraft server 1.7.10 on my personal server hosted on the Rackspace Cloud. The server is whitelisted, as it is intended only for my kids and me to play on. The server had been running fine for a couple of months. Then, we went away for the weekend, and when we came back, we could not log on. The server would send this message: "java.net.ConnectException connection refused".

So, I logged on to the host machine, killed the process, and re-started the Minecraft server. Still, no dice. I checked the whitelist - that looked good. I tried turning off whitelisting - still nothing.

Obviously, the client can reach the server - because of the Java message - so I don't think it is a port or firewall issue. I just can't figure out what the problem is, and why it would just start happening on its own. The only thing I can think of is that somehow the world got corrupted during a save at some point, and now something somewhere is garbled.

Anyone have any ideas?

This happened to me with a different host, oddly enough you need to sign in to your host's website and chances are they need you to agree to the updated EULA system, THis was from 1.7.10 onwards and applies to all servers.

Now seeing that you are just using a server host and not specifically a gaming host you need to ftp to get to the server files and from there simply find the EULA.txt and Change eula=false to eula=true then Save/Upload the changed file and restart your server.

This definately works for 1.7.10 servers and if you haven't already done it this will be your issue.

once accepted you will be able to access it fine.