I'm having the same problem (can't login), and hosts.deny didn't solve it. I can't ssh to localhost either.
I'm new to debian, and I'm just trying to get a usable system set up -- one that I can ssh into. I haven't figured out the package management system very well, so I dl'd and built my own OpenSSH. On an earlier install, I did exactly the same thing and it worked -- this time I selected MD5 passwords, and I think that's tripping me up. I remember getting hung up with this on slackware, too, but I can't remember what I did. I added the OpenSSH example PAM file to /etc/pam.d, but that didn't do it. Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks...
