SSH and abject stupidity

[Vitriol]

This is going to sound really silly.

I work in troubleshooting at a relatively large company, and we use VNC to fix minor problems on all sorts of computers without having to do unhealthy things like stand up or move around.
As part of our continuing campaign to reduce our workload, we would now like to run VNC as a service on some off-site servers we have. For security reasons, this isn't going to be practical without some kind of encryption.
Tunelling through SSH looked like a good answer, so yesterday I downloaded a pairof evaluation copies from ssh.com and sat down with my desktop and a laptop to try it out.
Everything seemed straightforward enough, set up blah blah blah (server on the laptop, client on the desktop), until the actual connection, where a password is necessary. This seemed a reasonable request until I realised that I had never been asked for a password.
I have tried all of the passwords on the laptop, yet nothing works. It's driving me insane, can someone please explain which password it wants, and earn eternal graditude?

Robert Hansen

____________________________
I'm sorry, the number you have dialed is imaginary. Please rotate telephone 90 degrees and try again.

 

[rycamor]

What operating system are you using?

 

[Vitriol]

Windows 2000. Means I can't just use key authorisation instead.

 

[rycamor]

Which service were you trying to access on the remote computer; command prompt? FTP? File shares? What port were you trying to connect to?

 

[Vitriol]

I was going to tunnel VNC through the connection so we can securely administer a remote server. I was connecting to port 22. Looking at the trace, it seems connect just fine, but I have treid every combination of user names and passwords currently on the server, and none grant access. I have also checked, and it's not set up to also authenticate with a key, just password. (as it's windows, you can't authenticate without the password, even with keys).

 

[rycamor]

I have been thinking about your problem, but I am more familiar with SSH on Unix systems. I assume you are tyring to connect with SSH to get a command prompt on the remote system, and then from there you will start the VNC connection.

I'm still missing one piece: Are you talking about the VNC asking for the password, or SSH asking for the password?