PHP + SSH How can I fix: "Error: ssh2_connect(): Error starting up SSH connection(-4): Invalid MAC received?"

Question

Working on a project that was built using ssh2_connect to download files from a server. The production server the project is running on works, but getting ssh2_connect to work on my Mac running OSX 10.8 is proving to be problematic.

The following command:

ssh2_connect("myhost", 22);

Produces the following error:

Error: ssh2_connect(): Error starting up SSH connection(-4): Invalid MAC received

I can connect from the command line, so I know it isn't a system wide SSH issue. Does anyone know how to debug or solve this problem? Thanks in advance and may your children be blessed with large brains and social skills :)

UPDATE: Solution posted below

Answer 1

The PHP documentation has an example that provides the 3rd argument. The author of this post http://phing.tigris.org/ds/viewMessage.do?dsForumId=1083&viewType=browseAll&dsMessageId=3022056#messagefocus (Derek Gallo) had the exact same issue, and he was able to point me in the right direction. Thanks Derek. It seems that some distributions require the extra parameters. In the end, I converted my code to use phpseclib as it is a pure PHP solution that doesn't require any special modules.

$methods = array(
  'kex' => 'diffie-hellman-group1-sha1',
  'client_to_server' => array(
    'crypt' => '3des-cbc',
    'comp' => 'none'),
  'server_to_client' => array(
    'crypt' => 'aes256-cbc,aes192-cbc,aes128-cbc',
    'comp' => 'none'));

ssh2_connect("myhost", 22, $methods);

Answer 2

See below link, that explains all the alternatives

http://kvz.io/blog/2007/07/24/make-ssh-connections-with-php/