login attempt to nonexistent user

[Yan Seiner]

I am trying to build a minimal system.  Basically, this system is a 
semi-embedded sort of thing; an old Mac that will sit in a remote 
location running a vpn tunnel and rsync.

As such, I am building the rootfs by hand; adding only those libraries 
and files that are abosolutely necessary.

The system is based on Debian Sarge.

It successfully boots using busybox, and I have rsync and vtun running.  
ssh logins are the last piece of the puzzle.

I have successfully compiled dropbear, and it runs fine, but when I try 
to login via ssh, I get (on the client):

yan at poseidon:~/.ssh$ ssh pizza -l root
root at pizza's password:
Permission denied, please try again.
root at pizza's password:
Permission denied, please try again.
root at pizza's password:
Permission denied (publickey,password).

and on the dropbear server I get the message 'Login attempt for 
non-existent user from 192.168.128.222:nnnn

What's going on?  I have /etc/passwd set up....

I'm not getting any errors or anything from dropbear.

--Yan