Login and ssh hang after password, before logging

Hello everyone,

I hope someone out there likes a challenge, or has seen the same thing
as I am getting here.

I have a nice new server, running RedHat Linux. It was up about a
month, acting as a web server with apache, an ssh server, and a samba
server. Today, I was able to log in through the console and ssh fine
until 2:30 in the afternoon.

The Problem:
I tried again to log in through ssh at 3:00, and got a login prompt,
where I put my username, and a password prompt where I put my password.
It then sat there. Weird enough, but it IS a network service, so I
tried from the console. Same response as ssh: no activity after the
password is entered.


Details:
At this time, all services were running normal, such as web, Samba, and
even logging. I was able to get into the server after a ctrl-alt-del
reboot, so it was still very responsive.

The weirdness is here: When I checked the secure log for ssh activity,
I saw NO RECORD of my attempted logins. I did see another user attempt
to log in through ssh, but was recorded as denied, since he wasn't in
the list of AllowedUsers. There was no sign of login activity on the
console in the messages log, and last didn't show that time.

Unfortunately, I was unable to get a copy of the logs from the server,
but I'll do so tomorrow, if needed.

I did come to my senses and turn on DEBUG2 logging for sshd (I'll get
them a few hours from now) and I am using ssh -vvv to see all that
happens after I enter my password and before it hangs. Here are the
results for password authentication and public-key authentication:

password:
debug1: Next authentication method: password
paul@site's password:
debug3: packet_send2: adding 48 (len 61 padlen 19 extra_pad 64)
debug2: we sent a password packet, wait for reply
*hangs*
I am able to ^C out of that hang

public-key:
Enter passphrase for key '/home/paul/.ssh/id_dsa':
debug1: read PEM private key done: type DSA
debug1: Authentication succeeded (publickey).
debug1: channel 0: new [client-session]
debug3: ssh_session2_open: channel_new: 0
debug2: channel 0: send open
debug1: Entering interactive session.
*hangs*
I'm not able to ^C out of that - I just close the terminal window

I should note that this occurs on the following clients, all in
geographically different locations:
Windows (Putty)
Linux
Mac (terminal ssh)

>>From what I've seen, people who have similar type troubles are NOT
having the trouble from more than one client, but I'd be happy to see
otherwise.

Thanks for your time, sorry for the length. I hope to hear from you,
but if I solve this on my own, I'll post the solution.

Paul

.

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