When I try to log into to.ugcs.caltech.edu (without an ssh identity), I get the following message: ~ % ssh to.ugcs.caltech.edu -l thisuserdoesnotexist ssh: to.ugcs.caltech.edu: Name or service not known again, with the -v flag ~ % ssh -v to.ugcs.caltech.edu -l thisuserdoesnotexist SSH Version OpenSSH_2.1.1, protocol versions 1.5/2.0. Compiled with SSL (0x0090581f). debug: Reading configuration data /home/wtanaka/.ssh/config debug: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config debug: Applying options for * debug: Seeding random number generator debug: ssh_connect: getuid 2672 geteuid 0 anon 0 ssh: to.ugcs.caltech.edu: Name or service not known This behavior seems to be independent of the username I pass into ssh, and independent of whether or not the username exists. the same binary of ssh works for other sites to which I have attempted connecting. (examples: shell1.sourceforge.net, linux.compile.sourceforge.net) I could not locate a mirror which had a corresponding SRPM for this package, and ftp.redhat.com does not seem to let me log in right now. I ran grep against the 2.2.0p1 (this is a different revision) sourcebase retrieved from openssh.com, and could not find the error message.
This is not an OpenSSH issue. to.ugcs.caltech.edu is a CNAME, but the record it points to doesn't have A record. Thus, the host you're trying to connect to is not resolvable. Site configuration problem.