after a fair bit of going-around I discovered that the reason that I couldn't get a channel was twofold. First, auth_ok lies and second, the auth_password just didn't work. Another poster in the thread said he had similar problems. I didn't pursue it any further: once I switched to publickey all the problems went away {and I turned to other troubles I had in my code :o)}. I believe this was a windows problem -- several folk confirmed that it worked OK on unix. If I get a chance I'll try it again and post more info if I get it.