Thanks for the suggestions, all! I think Bryann's hit the nail on the head as I didnt change the password syncing option he pointed out. Regretfully.. uncommenting that option and changing the password while in the root maintenance shell hasnt fixed the issue. When I try to login it's actually giving me an "Authentication failed" message after I submit my username. So I think my next stop will be the pam.d/common-auth file. I've got so little configured at this point it'd probably be faster to scrub the whole thing and reinstall, but I wouldnt learn nearly as much that way. Thanks again for all your responses. I'll let you know how it goes. Cheers, Pete. <div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><< Very helpful & appreciated replies clipped >> </blockquote></div>