Auth_Banner question

[Jonathan Pauli]

Hi all,

I'm working with a pure PHP implementation of the SSH2 protocol. I've 
read the rfc and the thousands of lines in this project: 
http://phpseclib.sourceforge.net/

I'm simply trying to add a feature that will capture and display the 
USERAUTH_BANNER displayed by Open sshd prior to login.

When I connect to my opensshd server configured with the banner from 
openssh on any linux distro, I see the banner and all is well.
When I debug this PHP library, it never sees a binary packet of type 53- 
the Banner packet. I can connect, authenticate, etc, but a full
dump of the data shows no banner was sent by sshd. This makes me sad.

So, I'm wondering if there is some way to trigger sshd to send the 
banner. Can I request it explicitly with some message to sshd?
I know that according to the RFC it can be sent after authentication 
begins, but before it succeeds, but is there a specific sequence of events
in sshd where I can expect to see it?

Thanks so much!

-JP