hi, apologies that this is crossposted to emacs.help as I afterward found this list. I'm trying to connect to a remote swank from my local native Windows Emacs Slime. This seems to be possible but I haven't yet found a working method. Here's what I'm doing so far: 1. open a ssh tunnel to remote server C:\Documents and Settings\george\My Documents>plink -P <ssh port> -i "<private key file>" -ssh -L 4005:localhost:<ssh port> <user>@<host> 2. start swank server on remote server by logging in via ssh Authenticating with public key "imported-openssh-key" Passphrase for key "imported-openssh-key": Last login: Thu Jun 2 00:38:06 2011 from <address> gmk@labs:~$ ccl64 Welcome to Clozure Common Lisp Version 1.6-r14468M (LinuxX8664)! ? (ql:quickload "swank") To load "swank": Load 1 ASDF system: swank ; Loading "swank" ("swank") ? (swank:create-server) ;; Swank started at port: 4005. 4005 3. M-x slime-connect in local Emacs and accept defaults This returns the following error: Debugger entered--Lisp error: (cl-assertion-failed (plusp length)) (condition-case error (slime-net-read) (error (debug ... error) (slime-net-close process t) (error "net-read error: %S" error))) slime-net-read-or-lose(#<process SLIME Lisp>) slime-process-available-input(#<process SLIME Lisp>) slime-net-filter(#<process SLIME Lisp> "Protocol mismatch.\n") recursive-edit() byte-code("\306 @\307=\203! (note that it seems impossible to cut and paste that text, I guess from whatever control characters it's outputting to the buffer -- however the cl-assertion-failed seems to be the main problem, for reference see http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.lisp.slime.devel/4732 <http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.lisp.slime.devel/4732>). While I had hopes for this guide (http:// webcache.googleusercontent.com/search? q=cache:C3LnVLiH5lkJ:www.a1k0n.net/blah/archives/2005/11/index.html+ <http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=www.a1k0n.net/blah/archives/2005/11/index.html%2B> %22Using+SLIME+over+an+SSH+tunnel %22&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com <http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=www.google.com>), it doesn't seem like any of the plink-based methods use key authentication. I'm also having problems connecting just with tramp, as I can't get plink key authentication to work with that method. There doesn't seem to be a good way to specify the key. Specifying a saved session with plink doesn't work, i.e. it returns Unable to open connection: Host does not exist Though normal use of plink works fine. thanks for any help, George