problems using ssh to execute rmt

[John Covici <covici@ccs.covici.com>]

Hi.  I have been using ssh to go between one of my systems and
another so I can execute rmt since the remote system has a much
better tape drive.

The following worked up to maybe last week, but I am confused as to
what has changed.

On the local system I need to be root while running the tape drive so
I can get to all the files for a backup, but I want the remote system
not to permit root login, so I have the tape drive on the remote
system owned by a user, and from a root window -- to manipulate the
tape drive I export MT_RSH to a one line shell command like this:

ssh -l user -i /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa $*

and this worked fine till very recently.  Now if I do this rmt gives
me i/o error, although the tape drive status is not changed.

If I login to my local system as the user who owns the tape drive on
the remote system and su to root it works!  So, from a root window it
doesn't work, but from the user window sued to root it does and I
would like to understand what is happening?  Anyway to get it to work
the old way?  The only change I know ofwas an upgrade of ssh (running
sid Debian).

Thanks much for your help.

-- 
         John Covici
         covici@ccs.covici.com