Red Hat ENTERPRISE LINUX 4 - STEP BY STEP GUIDE Manual

Also see for ENTERPRISE LINUX 4 - DEVELOPER TOOLS GUIDE: Installation guide Installation guide Tuning guide Installation guide Manual

Contents

Chapter 14.Frequently Asked QuestionsThis chapter answers some of the most common questions about using Red Hat Enterprise Linuxthat you may ask as you become more familiar with it. From recovering forgotten passwords to trou-bleshooting package installation problems, this chapter guides you step-by-step through some com-mon tasks to get you on your way.14.1. Localhost Login and PasswordI have installed Red Hat Enterprise Linux. After rebooting, I get a message telling me it needs alocalhost login and password. What are these?Unless you specified a hostname for your computer, or received that information from a network con-nection, your Red Hat Enterprise Linux installation names your machine localhost.localdomainby default.When you get to that initial prompt, it is asking you to log in to your system. If you created a useraccount with the Setup Agent, you can log in using that username and password. If you did not createa user account, then you can log in as the super user, also known as root. The root password is thesystem password you assigned during installation.It is highly recommended that you create at least one user account for regular use of your RedHat Enterprise Linux system. You can create a new user after logging in as root with the UserManager graphical tool or the useradd shell prompt utility. For more information, refer toSection 1.6 Creating a User Account.14.2. Forgotten root PasswordHelp! I forgot my root password. How do I log in now?You can log in using single-user mode and create a new root password.To enter single-user mode, reboot your computer. If you use the default boot loader, GRUB, you canenter single user mode by performing the following:1. At the boot loader menu, use the arrow keys to highlight the installation you want to edit andtype [A] to enter into append mode.2. You are presented with a prompt that looks similar to the following:grub append> ro root=LABEL=/3. Press the Spacebar once to add a blank space, then add the word single to tell GRUB to bootinto single-user Linux mode. The result should look like the following:ro root=LABEL=/ single4. Press [Enter] and GRUB will boot single-user Linux mode. After it finishes loading, you willbe presented with a shell prompt similar to the following:sh-2.05b#5. You can now change the root password by typingpasswd rootYou will be asked to re-type the password for verification. Once you are finished, the passwordwill be changed. You can then reboot by typing reboot at the prompt; then you can log in toroot as you normally would.