HELP, so far so good but now it is asking for a login user and password???? I did not set a user os password what do I do now

During the installation were you asked for a user name and password? If so did you just skip that?

Before you do anything drastic, as recommended below, look at this URL. You may be okay.

http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/

Debian is one of the distributions that don't allow the root account to log on directly so you may be SOL. You could reinstall Debian and make sure that you make a user account during the installation.

I haven't installed Debian in about a year so I forget the details of the installation.

During the installation I did not get asked for a user name and password so I guess I must have missed that somewhere, so I guess I must re install again

I'm confused, are you using a Debian install, or an Ubuntu install? I've never done the Ubuntu network install but I've done the Debian one on several occasions, and it has always asked for a password.

IGF

It is a Debian install but as I said I may have missed it so I am re installing again

According to this page

http://www.debian.org/releases/stabl...i-system-setup

the user account setup should be right after you configure the clock. It should also come before the installation starts putting the base system on the hard disk.

I remember it said installing the base system which is after the password and user set up but I did not see the user and password part?

What ever happened, I am sure it was my fault, I guess I must have been too keen and skipped that part,,, bugger, we live and learn,,, the hard way

So do you have a working system?

Sadly not yet,, I am running a re install but when I get to the grub installer will I have to re install that again or not???

You shouldn't have to reinstall GRUB but it won't hurt to do it. Come to think of it maybe you should. GRUB uses some files on the Linux partition that need to be configured.

Okay, I say yes, reinstall GRUB.

Remember pay attention to the installation steps. When you configure the time zone and then configure the clock the next step should be to create a user account, according to the documentation.

You're lucky drag racing is on T.V. Otherwise I would be out in the yard working.

I will be forever grateful to drag racing and even more grateful to you too it just asked me for the password and user logon YAY

ok we are now at 50% on the base install

ok it is almost ready but I did skip the swap file, DUH I am guessing it is ok and that I can make a swapfile once I am in linux,,,, please tell me I can

Yes you can if the disk has a partition for it. Let's say that you already partitioned the drive so that the third partition was intended for the swap partition. If you are using an IDE hard disk then the swap partition will show up in Linux as /dev/hda3. In that case you could open a terminal window and enter the following commands.
After you do that once you don't have to do it again. Instead you would edit the /etc/fstab file to create a line like this.
That will tell Linux when it is starting that the /dev/hda3 partition is used for swapping and Linux will automatically mount that partition.