Cannot login as non-root user

[Kevin Williams]

I've just installed gentoo on my laptop. I can't login as a non-root user be 
it in console or X windows !!


Whe I try to login as a non-root user, after entering the password here's what 
I get:
----------------------------------------
Unable to cd to /home/kevin
Permission denied
---------------------------------------

Looking into the system log, I found these lines:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jan 10 23:32:44 [login] pam_tally(login:account): option deny=0 allowed in 
auth phase only
Jan 10 23:32:44 [login] pam_tally(login:account): unknown option: 
no_magic_root
Jan 10 23:32:44 [login] pam_unix(login:session): session opened for user kevin 
by kevin(uid=0)
Jan 10 23:32:44 [login] unable to cd to `/home/kevin' for user `kevin'_
Jan 10 23:32:44 [login] pam_unix(login:session): session closed for user kevin
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've tried commenting out the lines relevant to the above messages, yet it 
made no difference.

/home/kevin does exist and has the permissions 0755. 

I've tried creating another user account and trying to login as the new user 
results in the same error message. I'm stuck with this one, I can't work in 
gentoo until and unless this issue is fixed !!

Here's the thread I started on forums.gentoo.org:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-530899.html

Any help in this regard will be hghly appreciated.

Thanks.

Kevin