I'm now truly confused. Every example, here and in other places, has no apparent problem getting a channel. And I can't get even that to work. When I run this:

my $ssh2 = Net::SSH2->new() ;
$ssh2->connect(HOST) or $ssh2->die_with_error ;
$ssh2->auth_password($login{user}, $login{password}) ;
$ssh2->auth_ok() ;
my $chan = $ssh2->channel() or $ssh2->die_with_error ;
print "Got a channel\n" ;
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"got a channel" never gets printed and my program is just dead in the water. I discovered that if I wait long enough {a few minutes} I do get it to exit:

d:\Perl>sshlogin.pl
Connecting
Connected
Logged in
no libssh2 error registered at D:\Perl\sshlogin.pl line 31.
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Hmmm.. I just tweaked the program to try logging into a different SSH/shell account I have and the same thing happens. It just won't set up a connection. Very bizarre!

$ssh2->auth_password($login{user}, $login{password});

We first need to establish exactly where you're script is failing.
I suspect that authorization might be the problem.
Instead do:

$ssh2->auth_password($login{user}, $login{password})
 or die "Auth failed";
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$ssh2->auth_ok();

The value returned by that expression will tell you whether you are authorized or not - but you haven't checked that value.
You'd normally check that value:

$ssh2->auth_ok() or die "Not authorized";
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On Srawberry Perl, I'm finding that auth_password won't work now that I've got public key authorization set up. (Not sure if that's "just me", or "just windows", or "just the way it's supposed to be".)
So, if the user you're connecting as has public key authorization set up, you might need to authorize using auth_publickey. Here's the script I'm using with Strawberry Perl 5.28.0 on Windows 7, to channel into a local Ubuntu box:

use warnings;
use Net::SSH2;
use strict;

my @output;
my $ssh = Net::SSH2->new();
$ssh->connect("host") or die "Unable to connect host\n";

# auth_password no longer working for me 
# $ssh->auth_password("user", "password")
#   or die "Failed to auth\n";

# using auth_publickey works
$ssh->auth_publickey(
 "user",
 "C:\\cygwin\\home\\user\\.ssh\\id_rsa.pub",
 "C:\\cygwin\\home\\user\\.ssh\\id_rsa",
 0)
 or die "Auth failed";

die "Not authenticated"
 unless $ssh->auth_ok; # Double checking

my $channel = $ssh->channel()
 or die "Channel creation failed\n";

$channel->blocking(1);
$channel->exec("ls ~");
while (<$channel>) {push @output, $_}
print scalar @output, "\n"; # See no. of entries
print for @output;
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Works fine for me - but doesn't necessarily help you ;-)

UPDATE: I also have SSH access to a remote machine via the internet, and this access requires auth_password authorization (as public key authorization has not been set up).
The above script also works fine for it, once I switch from using auth_publickey to auth_password.

Cheers,
Rob

Perfect suggestion!! In the code I had

$ssh2->auth_password($login{user}, $login{password}) ;
$ssh2->auth_ok() ;
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and I was assuming that auth_ok was telling me truth. Not so. As you suggested, I put in an explicit error check on the auth_password and now I get:

d:\Desktop>sshtest
Authentication failed (username/password) (-18 LIBSSH2_ERROR_PUBLICKEY
+_UNRECOGNI
ZED) at D:\Desktop\sshtest.pl line 13.
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Now I have to figure out what PUBLICKEY_UNRECOGNIZED means. I think it means that it doesn't recognize the servers key and I need to figure out how to get that "accepted" -- I know I've had to do that in my sftp and ssh clients, I didn't think it'd be a problem with this. Is it worth a bug-report on Net::SSH2 that auth_ok doesn't seem to work?

I copied your code exactly, only changed the host, user and password, and I'm, again, greeted with

d:\Desktop>sshtest
Logged in
Can't locate object method "die_with_error" via package "ssh2" (perhap
+s you forg
ot to load "ssh2"?) at D:\Desktop\sshtest.pl line 17.
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