password strangeness in 7.2

I may have been looking at this box for too long, but I cannot think of the cause of the password problems that I'm having. Changing my password with passwd left me unable to login via ssh. passwd reported that the password had been changed and the value in /etc/shadow had changed, but I could no longer log in (ssh or ftp) I copied the password field from a 6.4 box and am now able to login again. Could anybody point me in the right direction for troubleshooting this? I'd appreciate it. Thanks Larry Mills-Gahl