Hello, SSH issue.
I am having this actually with SLC3.0.6, not the SL3.0.4, but maybe
you have an idea how to help this.
description:
when using keys based authentication method I get 2.5 seconds delay, i.e.:

user@machine1:~$ time ssh machine2 hostname
time ssh ds-w10 hostname
machine2

real    0m2.657s
user    0m0.060s
sys     0m0.010s
user@machine1:~$

analysis:
At 1st I thought this is DNS issue ( although we use both direct and
reverse lookups extensively )
After a little dig, I got to the fact that the session delays exactly
at the time when the server picks up an authentication method.
After another dig on the ssh server, I realized the ssh server is
trying to 1st authenticate user via keyboard interactive methods, and
only then 'falls back' to key based method.
GOOGLE shows there are reports on such thing in the web and ML
archives, but no solution is discussed.
After several IRC conversations I realized that this is maybe a
compile time option.
I even have tried to imply the order on the client side, but this is
not respected by the server.

Question: Is ther a way to force sshd to use a certain order of
authentication methods ?

Shall I simply use SL3 openssh-server package and end with it ?
:)