I have two machines with same subnets X.Y.Z.1 and X.Y.Z.2 I connect them directly with a crossover cable. I can
$ ping X.Y.Z.2
from X.Y.Z.1 and the response is machine 2 is alive but if I do something like
$ ping -s X.Y.Z.2
it hangs. machine 1 is open solaris. Machine 2 has been hpUX, LINUX and Solaris Sparc second test
$ssh X.Y.Z.2
connects and asks for DSA key, which I accept with "yes", then it hangs
Your problems are due to not having dns working. It looks like Solaris ping -s hangs if dns lookups don't work. ssh also tries to do a reverse dns lookup on connections so it will hang for a long time if dns doesn't work.
To make ssh work, you should be able to edit the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file on the server and add
UseDNS no
and of course instead of using ping -s just use regular ping without the -s to disable the dns lookups.
Are you sure it is hanging and not just timing out while ssh is attempting to do a DNS lookup? Try waiting 60 seconds and see what happens. I'll bet it works.
