Hello world

After I have installed Slackware 3.5 using the install file system I downloaded from ftp sites, I have problem logging in.

I entered "root" to try and login. There was a long pause (approx 15 seconds) after which the login prompt just reappeared. There was no prompt for a password or error message saying "root" wasn't a good username. Just a delay and then a redisplay of the login prompt.

How I installed:
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It's a 486 with 24MB RAM. I have Windows 95 (FAT16) running fine on /dev/hda1. I used an UMSDOS distribution (Grey Cat Linux) with kernel 2.0.34 to load a rootdisk to install. This is the kernel I'm using. I formatted the /dev/hda2 partition as ext2 and /dev/hda3 as a "linux swap" partition.

The whole install process worked fine; no problems at all. When I booted for the first (and second, and third) time the kernel loaded beautifully from LILO and ran all my /etc/rc.d scripts and loaded all my daemons. When it came to the login screen (agetty, I think) there was this problem.
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What I've tried:
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I've checked my "passwd" and "group" files in /etc, and they both have "root" entries with user id 0 and nothing in the password field.
I didn't install "shadow", the password masking app.
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I'll naturally continue trying what comes to mind, but I'd appreciate your ideas and help, especially if you've encountered this problem before.

Thanks.
rpd

Check out the Slackware forum -- it seems like a few other people were having that problem with specific setups, I'm sorry I don't know more off the top of my head.

Question though; why are you running Slack 3.5? ZipSlack is a very tiny version of Slackware that may be more suited to your needs (and it comes with a greatly-updated set of files compared to 3.5)

Get a newer version.

You will likely have fewer problems.

Thanks guys.
I was using Slackware 3.5 because it's a 486, but I'll definitely check out zipslack.

rpd
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Slackware is for slackers.

I finally solved my problem!
When I installed everything I had a umask of 022 (the default).
This gave the installed files permissions not allowing execution by my new root (I think).
Anyway, I don't really know how umask works, but I set 'umask 000' before I installed again, and now everything works fine.

I hope this helps someone.
rpd
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Slackware is for slackers

A umask of 022 will not prevent root from having executable permission (the owner has all permissions, 0 are masked, and for group and others write permissions (2) are masked. In no case is executable permission masked). So chances are that umask setting wqwasn't the real problem.

And use, please do get something newer -- goodness knows how many security and bug issues there are with a distro that old.

even the new stable versions support 486.