[plug] PuTTY and Gentoo using ssh - PuTTY crashes

[Denis Brown]

Dear PLUG list members,

I've just brought up a Gentoo installation (with thanks to BillK for some 
excellent off-list tips) and all seems sweet EXCEPT when I try to ssh into 
the machine using PuTTY on Win NT4.   First time, PuTTY asked to confirm 
the key, which I did, then it asked for a username, accepted that and then 
asked for the password.   Upon entering the correct password, PuTTY's 
reaction is to throw a Dr Watson error.   Turning on PuTTY logging, it does 
not get to write a logfile at that point; it dies before being able to tell 
all.

If I PuTTY into a Debian machine and from there connect to the Gentoo box 
with ssh, all is sweet.

If I PuTTY to the Gentoo box, supply a valid username but deliberately 
supply a bogus password at first, authentication fails but then returns for 
a second try at the password.   If I now enter the correct password for 
this user, I get in no problems.   I can repeat this sequence of events 
consistently.

Huh???

Tried various protocol preferences (2, 1), various cyphers (AES, blowfish, 
3DES) at the PuTTY end, to no avail.   The Gentoo ssh package is up-to-date 
as of yesterday morning and from what I can see, has a reasonable config 
file content.   Gentoo sets upon protocol 2 and 3DES as its 
defaults.   Tried as much as would seem to make sense (and some things that 
don't!) in the PuTTY setup, to no avail.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.   I have not tried any other ssh(2) 
client... TeraTerm unfortunately only seems to speak protocol version 1 so 
is a non-starter.   Neither have I tried any other PuTTY-hosting OS but I 
doubt it's an NT4 issue, somehow.

Cheers and TIA,
Denis