Authpf closing connection spontaneously

[George Kennedy <kennedyg@rferl.org>]

I am having a problem with authpf on 3.4 generic.  If a user with authpf 
set as their login shell tries to login the login seems to proceed 
normally.  The username and password prompt is presented and once the 
password is entered the motd is shown.  Then the user is immediately 
logged out.  If they were logging in via ssh they just get a connection 
closed message.  If they were actually logging in at a terminal there is 
about a 2 or 3 second delay after the motd is printed and then they are 
dumped right back to the username prompt.

So far I have checked these things:

The authpf binary exists
Users shell is set to usr/sbin/authpf
/etc/authpf/authpf.rules exists
/usr/sbin/authpf is listed in /etc/shells
Deleted and recreated a blank /etc/authpf/authpf.rules
Created a new users account to eliminate some odd problem with the 
account.  Same results.  If I change their login shell to /bin/sh they 
can login fine.

Can't seem to find anything similar to this on the archives or with a 
google search.  Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks

Kennedy