Help: Weirdness with ssh/pam when trying to ssh in

[Nabana]

So on one of the Linux systems here (2.6 kernel if it matters), there's some weirdness regarding trying to ssh into the system. Basically, if you give it the wrong password on the first ssh attempt, it will give you two more attempts, but even if you give it the correct password, it still won't let you in on those subsequent attempts. (If you give the correct password on the first attempt, it will let you in.)

Example:

user1(at)machine1# ssh user2(at)machine2
user2(at)machine2's password: <wrong password>
Permission denied, please try again.
user2(at)machine2's password: <correct password>
Permission denied, please try again.
user2(at)machine2's password: <correct password>
Permission denied (publickey,gssapi-with-mic,password).
user1(at)machine1#

The system has sshd configured to use pam (i.e., UsePAM set to 'yes' in sshd_config), but I'm kind of a PAM dummy.

Any ideas?
Thanks!

[unspawn]

on one of the Linux systems here

...implying there's at least one that works as advertised so you can diff your setup against.

Any ideas?

Other than that I think that without exact output from running 'sshd -D -d -d -d -e' (add "-p 222" for testing?) and without 'ssh -v -v -v (-p 222)', without knowing the exact OpenSSH version, without verifying the openssh-server package and without relevant /etc/pam.d stacks you basically don't get far wrt troubleshooting.