I get the following output when I try to connect the slave:

[10/08/10 10:27:44] [SSH] Opening SSH connection to slave.host.name:22.
[10/08/10 10:27:44] [SSH] Authenticating as username with /home/username/.ssh/id_rsa.
[10/08/10 10:27:44] [SSH] Authenticating as username/******.
[10/08/10 10:27:44] [SSH] Authentication successful.
[10/08/10 10:27:44] [SSH] The remote users environment is:
java.io.IOException: Could not open channel (The connection is being shutdown)
at com.trilead.ssh2.channel.ChannelManager.waitUntilChannelOpen(ChannelManager.java:127)
at com.trilead.ssh2.channel.ChannelManager.openSessionChannel(ChannelManager.java:584)
at com.trilead.ssh2.Session.<init>(Session.java:40)
at com.trilead.ssh2.Connection.openSession(Connection.java:1047)
at com.trilead.ssh2.Connection.exec(Connection.java:1434)
at hudson.plugins.sshslaves.SSHLauncher.reportEnvironment(SSHLauncher.java:450)
at hudson.plugins.sshslaves.SSHLauncher.launch(SSHLauncher.java:177)
at hudson.slaves.SlaveComputer$1.call(SlaveComputer.java:184)
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:303)
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:138)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:886)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:908)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619)
[10/08/10 10:27:44] [SSH] Connection closed.