A little late to the game, but I noticed you leftI can not find the "easy" part!
I get "access denied"
Here are my edits, what am I missing?
I edited /etc/pam.d/common-auth as described.
modified shadow
modified sshd_config
"PasswordAuthentication yes" uncommented, where @Crowz had his commented out. This may be a red herring, but....
Please let us know what finally works/worked for you.
MDS