Access denied for a particular user by PAM account configuration

The issue is with PAM stack configuration. Your host is configured with pam_access and default configuration is not allowing external/SSH access for the new user golden ,even though your keys are setup properly.

Adding golden user into /etc/security/access.conf as below fixed the issue.

+:golden:ALL

To see more information readman access.conf which explains each field of this file. Look at examples section to understand the order and meanings of LOCAL, ALL etc

I had the same issue and none of suggested options worked. But I found in one of forums (https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1960510) a "workaround" which worked perfectly.

Edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config and set

UsePAM no

While it's probably not the real solution, because something is definitely wrong with my machine (yesterday it was working fine!), this one at least works.

I had the same issue. pam access would deny a particular user on one machine but not others. Eventually, realized I forgot to update /etc/shadow.

Once that's updated, the problem was fixed for me.