After 2nd day of a first time Debian install, somehow I got GNOME to show up after boot. I type in "root" and the password (and I am 80%sure of the password) but it won't let me in. So I tried to start to a single user mode at lilo by "init=/bin/bash". The problem is it mounts read-only. So I remount via "mount / -o remount,rw". I run the "passwd" command to reset my password and try the "reboot", "init 0", "init 6", "shutdown now" commands which all gives me a message with "init" complains about unable to open/write to a contrl channel so I hard reboot. GOME comes up and it still doesn't like my password. So I go thru the whole thing over again, but before rebooting, I try to remount "mount / -o remount,ro". After reboot and GNOME logon screen, still doesn't like my password.
So i booted from the CD typing "rescue root=/dev/hda2 (that's where my root FS is). Then after going thru the regular bootup procedure it goes back to GNOME again.
So this time, I type "linux" to bring up the os from the CD. I mounted the root FS and got into the command prompt. It can't find "passwd" executable. So I do a "find" and fuond it under /target. Ran it and complains about missing library. And this is where I stand right now.
My other option is to reinstall the system and at the moment, I am not sure which way is faster:trying to reset the password or reinstalling the whole thing.
I know this is a touchy subject so if no one answers, I won't take offense. but if you could/know of an esier way, please let me know.

Hi again,
I just remembered "linux init 1" (long hours at work is getting to me) and this did accept my root password as I remembered it. So now, it is confirmed that it is GNOME that does not like my password and not the OS itself. How can I fix this problem? I mean the GNOME not liking my password part. Ofcourse I could change my boot config to load command prompt and then go into GNOME from the command line, but I would like to solve this GNOME problem anyhow, as part of a learning process if anything...

root account is disabled by default in X. Create a normal user to start X and enable root to login after using X.

ps : i don't recommand you login as root for a X session.

that did cross my mind as I have had a painful experience way back when trying to figure out why I culdn't telnet to my linux box for about a month until I found out that telnet on linux doesn't allow root login. this time, I only wasted a coupel of hours instead of weeks. Thanks for the info.

However, you can setup GDM to allow root logins (though I can't see why you would really want to do that). To allow root to login, select 'configure' from the system menu and tick/untick the box that allows root logins - it's in the security section.

(However, I might be wrong regard this being an option in the normal configuration screen. If it's not, open /etc/GDM/gdm.conf and set AllowRoot to 'true').