SSH access between a Debian 2.2 box and a RedHat laptop

[Oliver Hingst <oliverh@technomancer.f9.co.uk>]

Hello again,
I have finally come to the conclusion that Telnet is inferior and I have
chosen to install SSH.
I have installed SSH 1.2.x (OpenSSH ?) from the UK Debian mirror (client
& server)  The Debian machine will allow SSH access from a RedHat 6.1
laptop.  On the laptop I installed newest RPMS of OpenSSH (2.x) found on
the OpenSSH website.
To simplify the installation (or so I thought), I read the LinuxNewbie
NHF on installing & configuring SSH.  What I did was, I generated the
two keys using "ssh-keygen" on both machines.  I then copied
$HOME/.ssh/identity.pub to "authorized_keys", also on both machines. 
And then I ftp'ed both identity.pub files across, so that the Debian key
was on the RH laptop and the RH key was on the Debian machine.  I then
did this :

"cat identity.pub >> authorized_keys" on both machines.

Then on the RH laptop I type, "ssh -l oliverh -v 192.168.1.x" and then I
should be able to log-on....
Sadly, this is not the case.  Instead I get an error message:
"The authenticity of host '192.168.1.x' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"

What exactly have I done wrong ?

Oliver