Problem with "Shell link"

[Theodore Kilgore <kilgota auburn edu>]

In MC, the option "Shell link" from the drop-down menu is supposed to 
provide in the relevant one of the two MC panels a display of the 
directory structure of another machine, to which one connects by ssh.

In general, this option works for me well enough. But there is a machine 
at work to which I need to connect for which it does not work. What I 
would hope is that, if nothing else, someone can point me toward ways to 
diagnose the problem or to get some debug output so that the problem can 
be traced.

The (remote) machine for which the "Shell link" option seems to fail is a 
central server machine at my university. I have an account on that 
machine, and I can access that account by ssh (name of that machine). 
Then, no problem. I get a password prompt, and I log in, and I get a command 
prompt.

But if I start MC and do from one of the panels the "Shell link" option, 
then what happens is, I get a password prompt, then type the password, and 
after that a blank screen. If I type a deliberately wrong password, then 
it is rejected and I get asked again for the password (probably indicating 
that the problem does not occur at this step). If I type the right 
password, then the terminal (or xterm, it makes no difference) just hangs. 
Nothing happens, except that one must open another terminal or xterm and 
kill the connection. To do this, I have to do "ps ax" and find the 
attempted ssh connection, and kill it.

The remote machine is running Linux, apparently Red Hat Enterprise Linux 
(uname output available if needed). The only peculiar thing about its 
setup is that it is running csh, and when I log in I have there a .profile 
file which tells it to start bash. And when I log out after doing a 
regular, command line connection I have to type exit to get out of bash, 
then type exit again to log out.

I do not know the underlying cause of the problem which I have just 
described. I have asked a couple of local IT people what might be causing 
the problem, and they do not seem to know, either.

Thus, unless someone has experienced similar problems and has some good 
guesses, it is very difficult to work toward a solution in the absence of 
debug output.

Does anyone have any clever suggestions?

Theodore Kilgore