A week ago my open bsd firewall started to show a very strange behaviour. I have the ssh-daemon running and ususally log-in remotely to be able to administrate the pf.conf file. But now I cant log in. Ok, maybe I've just forgott my password. I booted in single user mode and changed it, then booted normally but couldn't log in anyway. I booted in single user mode again changed it to another password, changed to another user (using su) and then changed user to root again (again using su). Was prompted for the password, entered it and login was again rejected. When i tried to change the password it complained that something was wrong with a file called /etc/master.passwd. When looking at the file it contained parts of my pf.conf file.
If your master.passwd contains parts of your pf.conf things sound really weird.
Remember, if you ever touch master.passwd ALWAYS use vipw to keep dbs synced. I would try to create a new user foo, check if it works to login as foo from the localhost using kb. then try with ssh as the new user and see how that works. I'm unsure about exactlly what your problem is, your description of changing passwds really confuse me. Do not forget to set a existing shell for the user foo. GL /bkw
