Hello Following closer examination, the difference was due to ipv6 connectivity : with localhost defined both to 127.0r.0.1 and ::1 in /etc/hosts on the server, dropbear used ::1 because due to some VPS tweaks it occurred in the file before 127.0.0.1 did.
(the hosting companies overwrites and messed up some files like /etc/hosts and /etc/interfaces - I had only known about the latter until now) My solution was to comment that out, and hope it will survive their tweaks. If it doesn't, I'll define 127.0.0.1 in the .ssh/config. Thanks a lot for the help! Guylhem
