Fedora and no Login Name Option
 

I have installed Fedora 9 on two hard drives, both will not accept login names and passwords.

I do not recall in the second instance being given the option to make a username.

Is there a set username by default?

You have to create a user during the install process. This normally happens the very first time you boot the new install.

You must have at least set a root password - so enter username "root" and enter the root password. As root you can create normal users for day-to-day use.

You should not be installing f9 at all - this is now unsupported and will have a large number of security issues. I understand the current release is f12.
http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-f12.html

DO NOT install the old and unsupported Fedora 9 . The current version is Fedora 12 .PLEASE install that one .
NO
during the install you make a root account THEN on the FIRST boot you make the user accounts
PS you can NOT log-in as root using the gui this is for security
root login is TEXT ONLY .

Hi, I chose Fedora Sulphur, because it is in my CD case, handy and I found an old computer, and it is very old. I want to give it to a poor friend.

I thought Fedora Sulphur would have older card drivers.

And it will hardly be connected to the internet at all.

After entering root and the password, it reads, "root@localhost". I tried "adduser" and got a list of commands.

Fedora comes with NONE / ZERO / 0 drivers except for the opensource ones ,

use CentOS - it has a 5 year life span ( unlike fedora 9 witch is a dead and unsupported version )

You are not doing your friend any favours by that.AFAIK: only the older plug-n-pray interface support is dropped from the distro. All other free software drivers are included out of the box in all recent versions of fedora - such as will support 99% of HW out there. If you need a light system, then do not install all of fedora.As well as the personal issue of vulnerabilities, there will also be the problem of the impression created when your friend decides they want some software or updates and has trouble getting them. But so long as your freind realises they have an old/unsupported distro then it should be OK.

Back to the problem in hand:I take it the login took you to a text console? So you must have made a pretty minimal install right there.

Try:

startx

see if you get a gui - from there it is trivial to manage users.

man adduser

tells you how to use it.

if you want to add user "alice" you enter:

adduser alice

Just to clarify a few points:

But those "open source" and free software drivers actually support the vast majority of hardware out there. So that is a pretty big "except for" there.

RHEL ships with only free software drivers (according to RH policy pages) - I understood that CentOS followed this policy. A quick search of the centos wiki suggests that they are meant to. Perhaps you can provide an example or a reference of hardware drivers available in CentOS which are not available in fedora?

Centos produces an update release every 6 months and a new release in 18months to 2 years, just like RHEL. RH support their major releases for 7 years - and so does CentOS.
http://wiki.centos.org/
CentOS 5 will be supported into 2014

fedora has no point releases but a new release every 6-8 months. When there is a new release, the previous one remains supported for at least until the next new release - giving it an official "lifetime" of up to 16 months.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/LifeCycle

Of course you are correct that f9 should not be used.

I would also join you in suggesting CentOS for the use OP wants.
This will provide stability on the older hardware. I would not normally suggest fedora for a day-to-day system anyway. I may also have pointed at OpenSUSE or XUbuntu too. But this is not a "my distro is better than yours" thread ;)

The longer lifetime is a plus, but for someone who does not expect to do any maintenance, does it really matter?

Ok I got CentOS 5.4, bin, 3.7 G. Installed by text mode due to lack of memory. I will try "man adduser".

For adduser and startx did little.

Just trying to give root a name and login to start screen.

I had better luck with Knoppix, and may try dam small linux or Xubuntu for the lighter OS.

are you aware that when you install a linux distro in text mode THERE IS NO GUI installed so "startx " will NOT start the not installed x11

but "adduser " should add a new user ( bring up the program )

Apparantly the old computer has too small a memory, so, I will have to use another computer. Or there is only text mode all the way.

So root and password did it, but then local host and text commands were my only option.

CentOS 3.7 G will be good anyway, a lot of software on DVD... I'll make it a dual boot with Mint.

Thanks.

That is not the case for every gnu/linux distro. Fedora for instance.Though - having installed a completely new distro - the problem requiring adduser in the first place should have gone away. It should be possible to log-in to a regular user account.

The next step, surely, is to install some sort of light gui - xfce desktop? Does CentOS include that in the install media or will this require a separate download.

http://forum.xfce.org/index.php?topic=3047.0
... includes a script to install X and so on into CentOS 5 via yum.

It may be a good idea to research different environments.

"root" already has a name: root. You cannot change this.

As part of the installation process, you created a regular user, it has a name, use that. The adduser command will add new users to your system. You do not use the root account if you can help it. Avoid actually logging in as root.

You can perform routine administration using su -c or sudo - learn about them.

As mentioned - to get a gui you have to install one. From John VV's comments, the text-install of CentOS does not do this automatically like fedora does.

You expect that your friend will switch distros to gain extra functionality?

Mint has access to all the software CentOS has - though you have to be online. It is not much use if you are not able to got online. If this machine will run mint, then you'll probably be best advised to update and install extra software in an internet cafe.