Cannot log in to linux ?

Question

i was installed linux red hat 9.0 to my laptop. after finished installting it was rebooted and in a command window it requets "localhost login" . i gave the the login as "root" then when i'm trying to type the password .. it's not possible, coz it's not type in there. then without password i pressed enter it says login incorrect. i didn't create any user account during the installation and i just typed the root password. what should i do nw? please help

Answer 1

Normally on Windows, when you type the password (say "mypassword"), you see "**********" appearing on the screen. In some Linux command-line logins, the characters will not be "echoed back". That is, when you type a character, you won't see a character of a "*".

This doesn't mean that you cannot type the password. You are typing the password, but it is not echoed back. This is a security feature. Even if "****" is echoed back, a person watching you can come to know how many characters your password has. This makes guessing your password easy. So, to avoid this, the characters are not echoed back.

Just simply enter the password and press enter.

By the way, Red Hat 9.0 is way too old -- it's almost obsolete. I recommend a newer distribution. Ubuntu is best for beginners. You can get it from: http://shipit.ubuntu.com.

Other new distros include Fedora Core 6 (Fedora is Red Hat successor), Debian Etch etc.