Authentication Problem on Sun Solaris 8 and SSHd2

[Ben Ricker]

I am running SSH on a number of servers but none use SSH for anything 
but admin login. I am thinking of switching all users to it (for obvious 
security reasons) but I have had a rash of problems lately. The first 
was the 'Bad Packet' error which no one seems to care about or know the 
answer to why it suddenly appears on 2 servers while other servers 
running the same OS and SSH version work fine.

This problem is on a Sun E250 runninng Solaris 8 and OpenSSH 2.3. I 
could log into the box perfectly fine before but have not accessed the 
box in a while (at least a week). Now, I get the following trace when I 
try to login to a server:

<--snip-->
debug: Host 'hostname' is known and matches the DSA host key.
debug: bits set: 485/1024
debug: len 55 datafellows 4
debug: dsa_verify: signature correct
debug: Wait SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS.
debug: GOT SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS.
debug: send SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS.
debug: done: send SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS.
debug: done: KEX2.
debug: send SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_REQUEST
debug: service_accept: ssh-userauth
debug: got SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_ACCEPT
debug: authentications that can continue: publickey,password
debug: next auth method to try is publickey
debug: key does not exist: /home/username/.ssh/id_dsa
debug: next auth method to try is password
admin at hostname's password:
debug: authentications that can continue: publickey,password
debug: next auth method to try is password                   

Any ideas on this one?

Ben Ricker
Senior Systems Administrator
US-Rx, Inc.