Basic SSH port change not working on EC2 instance

I am trying to change the port of SSH on an EC2 instance, but I am not getting this to work.

What I am doing is the following:

Open the file /etc/ssh/ssh_config

Uncomment and change the line Port 2345

Save and close

run the command service sshd restart

Now I can still connect to port 22. And when I run the command ssh -p 2345 localhost i get:

ssh: connect to host localhost port 2345: Connection refused


It may be a typo, but if you want to change the port that sshd listens on, you need to edit the Port setting in /etc/ssh/sshd_config, not ssh_config.

Also, you're using two different port numbers above (2345 and 2232), but I'm sure that's a typo.

If it's not that, could you edit into your question the output of iptables -L -n -v so we can see your firewall rules?


ssh_config is the SSH client configuration file.

sshd_config is the SSH daemon (server) configuration file.

So, if you want to change the port for the ssh server You have to edit the sshd_config file,

Uncomment the line

Port 22

and change port 22 to 2345.

After editing the file, restart the ssh service.

/etc/init.d/sshd restart

And also allow ssh port in the iptables. and restart the iptables.