openssh 2.9 and passwords

[VeKTeReX <kmarshall mpcf com>]

I am running openssh 2.9 on all of my RedHat 7.1 boxes
(8 boxes in total).  These are mostly machines i built
last week, so they are fresh install and they are just
basic RedHat installs with the only addition being
OpenSSH (and OpenSSL as it is required by OpenSSH) and
occasionally Samba 2.2.1a.

My problem is this, when i try to ssh into a few of the
boxes (4 of them to be exact) the passwords do not
work.  It will ask me for a password for the user i am
logging in as, i supply it with the correct password,
and it just asks for the password again, as though it
were incorrect (it is not, i have tried with several
accounts and passwords).  Just for the hell of it i
also tried to ssh from a Win2K box using F-Secure and
it came up with the same problem, it just reprompts for
the password.

What is odd is that i installed OpenSSH in exactly the
same manner on ALL the boxes.  Nothing was done
differently that i can see to the boxes that don't work
as opposed to the boxes that do.  They all have the
same version of OpenSSH and OpenSSL.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
VeKTeReX