I reinstalled Suse on my Celeron system after it had previously refused to boot properly. Now it gets past the "Starting HAL daemon.....done" line eventually, then after a few minutes of further scrolling data it asked me for a "linux login". I typed "root" as I assumed that's the standard Linux login. However it immediately said "Login incorrect". If it's not looking for root, what is it looking for?

You probably all spotted my mistake immediately... OK I admit it, I'm an idiot who shouldn't be allowed near a computer! I typed in "/root" instead of "root" and it went to the next prompt, but... this is the bad one. It says "password", but I had not set up a root password during installation. Is there a default entry for this? This is the first boot of a newly installed system and I have not been prompted to enter a password until now, so I do not understand why it would say my chosen password is incorrect.

root is the GOD account for Linux installations. I find it hard to believe that the Suse distribution permitted the installation to complete with no root password. On the other hand, I have never tried to complete a Linux installation with no root password, so I do not know if this is usually prevented or not :). IMHO, the root account should ALWAYS have a password associated with it, and all distributions should enforce this requirement in the installation procedure. Presuming you did in deed complete the installation with no root password, you may be able to log in as root, by leaving the password text entry field enpty. If this works, open a terminal window and create a root password with: 'passwd root <newpassword>' where <newpassword> is replaced with the root password you wish to create. Also, add a regular user account with: 'useradd <newusername>' where <newusername> is replaced with the user name to be created and: 'passwd <newusername> <newuserpassword>' where <newusername> is replaced with the user name you created with the useradd command in the last step, and <newuserpassword> is replaced with the password you will use for this user account. Now when you log in, you can use your regular user account name and password. If attempting to log in as root with no password fails, then there is a root password, and it may be nearly impossible to access the system with out any recognized user name / password combination available. The easiest solution may be to reinstall the system, making sure to create a root password and a regular account for each user of the system. Ernie Registered Linux User 247790 ICQ 41060744