Mac OS X (Tiger) ssh issues

It seems post the 10.4.7 update I have been having some ssh issues, when connecting to other Mac’s running on the same network.

ssh -v only displayed the following potentially useful tidbit

Cannot determine realm for numeric host address

After much fruitless googling, I decided to add/include my ip address and a “friendly” name in the /etc/hosts file on the client (mac trying to access other machines from) and presto I was able to connect. This was a most annoying and difficult one to diagnose, easy fix though.