If you are experiencing a long, annoying delay when attempting to connect to a remote server via SSH – especially if you have recently noticed this problem after installing/upgrading Ubuntu Feisty – try commenting out the “GSSAPIAuthentication yes” line in your /etc/ssh/ssh_config file:

File: /etc/ssh/ssh_config
…
  HashKnownHosts yes
# GSSAPIAuthentication yes
  GSSAPIDelegateCredentials no
…

GSSAPIAuthentication specifies whether user authentication based on GSSAPI is allowed. Connections with GSSAPIAuthentication option enabled on non-kerberos SSH servers are very slow. If you run ssh in verbose mode you may get a “Miscellaneous failure” error message.

ssh -v -l example.com
…
debug1: Miscellaneous failure
No credentials cache found
…

After disabling GSSAPIAuthentication, you probably won’t have to wait as long to get your login in prompt.

written by Lee