I am trying to help another tech fix a login problem. Users cannot login 
to the console or via ssh. When an attempt is made all users get 
"permission denied".

 However users, including root can login via webmin. Attempting to 
change root password returns the following error:
 passwd: Authentication information cannot be recovered

Googling around seems to indicate it might be a problem with pam, but I 
have not found a solid answer on how to fix it yet.