Problems ssh Knoppix to Debian

I've just recently gotten back onto broadband (YAY) after 7 long
months on dialup (long story). There's plenty of internet radio, some
of which requires a Windows-only plugin (BOO, HISS). I have an old Dell
Pentium II and an original Win98SE CD, which I proceeded to install. A
visit to the Windows update site, and some reboots later, it's updated.

My current backup strategy is
- boot a Knoppix 3.4 CD on the Win98SE machine
- mount and cd to 700-meg scratch partition /dev/hda3
- dd if=/dev/hda1 of=win98_c
- fire up bsd-ftpd on my (Debian) linux machine
- push the drive image over my home LAN to the linux machine via ftp
- burn the drive image to CD on my linux machine (the Windows machine
doesn't have a CD-writer; it's CD-readonly)
- lather rinse and repeat for drives E:, F:, and G:

This is extremely clumsy. I would *REALLY* rather prefer to do it
"in one swell foop" like so...

dd if=/dev/hda1 | ssh waltdnes@192.168.123.250 'cat - > win98_c'

I do know that sshd works on my Debian machine. I used scp to push
over my data from its predecessor. I've run ssh-keygen, copied over the
public key and tried to ssh over from Knoppix. It doesn't work. I've
tried two variations...

ssh -2 -v -v -v -l waltdnes -i /.ssh/id_dsa waltdnes@192.168.123.250
ssh -2 -v -v -v -i /.ssh/id_dsa waltdnes@192.168.123.250

Note that on a "knoppix 2" (text only) boot, root's HOME is actually /

Here's what I get with full verbose logging turned on...

> OpenSSH_3.8p1 Debian 1:3.8p1-3, SSH protocols 1.5/2.0, OpenSSL 0.9.7d 17 Mar 2004
> debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config
> debug1: Applying options for *
> debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 33: Deprecated option "RhostsAuthentication"
> debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 37: Deprecated option "FallBackToRsh"
> debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 38: Deprecated option "UseRsh"
> debug2: ssh_connect: needpriv 0
> debug1: Connecting to 192.168.123.250 [192.168.123.250] port 22.
> debug1: Connection established.
> debug3: Not a RSA1 key file /.ssh/id_dsa.
> debug2: key_type_from_name: unknown key type '-----BEGIN'
> debug3: key_read: missing keytype
> debug3: key_read: missing whitespace
> debug3: key_read: missing whitespace
> debug3: key_read: missing whitespace
> debug3: key_read: missing whitespace
> debug3: key_read: missing whitespace
> debug3: key_read: missing whitespace
> debug3: key_read: missing whitespace
> debug3: key_read: missing whitespace
> debug3: key_read: missing whitespace
> debug3: key_read: missing whitespace
> debug2: key_type_from_name: unknown key type '-----END'
> debug3: key_read: missing keytype
> debug1: identity file /.ssh/id_dsa type 2
> ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host

In the past (Debian-to-Debian), when I didn't have the public key set
up, I would be prompted for my password. I don't even get that. Any
ideas?

--
Walter Dnes; my email address is *ALMOST* like wzaltdnes@waltdnes.org
Delete the "z" to get my real address. If that gets blocked, follow
the instructions at the end of the 550 message.

On 1 Aug 2004 02:45:41 GMT, Walter Dnes (delete the 'z' to get my real address), <wzaltdnes@waltdnes.org> wrote:

> My current backup strategy is
> - boot a Knoppix 3.4 CD on the Win98SE machine
> - mount and cd to 700-meg scratch partition /dev/hda3
> - dd if=/dev/hda1 of=win98_c
> - fire up bsd-ftpd on my (Debian) linux machine
> - push the drive image over my home LAN to the linux machine via ftp
> - burn the drive image to CD on my linux machine (the Windows machine
> doesn't have a CD-writer; it's CD-readonly)
> - lather rinse and repeat for drives E:, F:, and G:
>
> This is extremely clumsy. I would *REALLY* rather prefer to do it
> "in one swell foop" like so...
>
> dd if=/dev/hda1 | ssh waltdnes@192.168.123.250 'cat - > win98_c'

I finally got ssh/scp working. "Everything you know is wrong" was the
title of a comedy album in the 1960's. At times that seemed to describe
my situation...

1) Although I do not have an sshd entry in inetd, I do need one in
hosts.allow to allow sshd to function properly. That explains why I
used to have an "ALL" entry for services once.

2) Regardless of what the ssh man page on Knoppix says about the
identity file defaulting to $HOME/.ssh/id_dsa, for root it's
/root/.ssh/id_dsa, not withstanding that HOME is set to "/".

--
Walter Dnes; my email address is *ALMOST* like wzaltdnes@waltdnes.org
Delete the "z" to get my real address. If that gets blocked, follow
the instructions at the end of the 550 message.