Problems with port forwarding on Suse Linux 9.0

[Bob Fischer]

Problem: I'm trying to forward a port (say, port 25) of a SuSE 9.0 Linux
system to an external client system (in this case running RedHat 9.0). 
It doesn't work, and the problem seems to be on the SuSE side.

Details
=======
On the client system, I run (where "suse-server" is the IP address of my
SuSE server system to which I'm trying to connect)

client> /usr/bin/ssh -f -L 5599:localhost:25 suse-server sleep 100
client> telnet localhost 5599
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
channel 2: open failed: connect failed: Connection refused
Connection closed by foreign host.

This is a problem with the port forwarding.  When I connect to the same
port from the suse-server computer, it works:

suse-server> telnet localhost 25
Trying ::1...
telnet: connect to address ::1: Connection refused
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 catfish.home ESMTP Postfix


I've pulled my hair out over this one, to no avail, nor have I found
anyone else with the problem.  More details:

client> rpm --query openssh                                             
openssh-3.6.1p2-19
client> rpm --query openssl
openssl-0.9.7a-23

suse-server> rpm --query openssh
openssh-3.7.1p2-18
suse-server> rpm --query openssl
openssl-0.9.7b-74

Thanks,
-- Bob