I usually go with something along the lines of: "I assume you tried sshd and it didn't work?" IE, I am assuming that you are not an idiot and that you tried th

I usually go with something along the lines of: "I assume you tried sshd and it didn't work?" IE, I am assuming that you are not an idiot and that you tried the obvious thing and that it didn't work for some reason that I don't understand yet.