ssh rsa/dsa keys not working with RHEL3/4

[Dan Lund]

Hi all,

I'm working with a few of our RHEL3 and 4 machines right now, getting
an automated ssh tunnel going between a RHEL3 (and 4 in prod) to a RH8
machine. (8 in prod too)

The problem I'm having is that with RHEL3/4, ssh doesn't seem to work
the same.  It's perplexing, and aggrevating.  I

've used "ssh-keygen -t rsa" on the RHEL3 box to create the id_rsa and
id_rsa.pub files, transferred the id_rsa.pub file to the remote RH8
box and put it into the ${HOME}/.ssh/authorized_keys file.  No dice.
The verbose debugging says it negotiates as ssh2 between each other,
reads the files, even finds the id_rsa file but then it says "we sent
a publickey packet, waiting for reply" and then "we did not send a
packet, disable method".
my ssh_config is essentially empty (stock, bare, empty) and the
sshd_config on the remote host is the same.

I've done RH8 -> RH8, RH8 -> Gentoo, Gentoo -> Gentoo.. okay... let's
just narrow it down and say I've done nearly every distribution to
every distribution =)  except RHEL3/4.

Anyone ever ran into this problem before?

RHEL4 uses OpenSSH 3.9p1, RH8 uses OpenSSH 3.4p1.

I've also tried localhost with two individual users just to see if the
RHEL3 or 4 box would auth against itself passwordless and it doesn't.
SOMETHING technology-wise has changed.....


-- 
"Courage is like love; it must have hope to nourish it."
-Napoleon Bonaparte