Root password
 

I installed Fedora 9 on my Mac powerbook laptop but for some reason i can't login as root. I know exactly what the password is but the system keeps saying wrong password.

So then I reinstalled Fedora and carefully typed in the root password during setup. So even with a new install and the fact that i know what the password is i can't login.

Would someone tell me how to reset the root password on a powerbook Mac with Fedora 9 installed on it.

I don't know if there is a Fedora-specific way to do this, but what I would do is boot into Linux using your install cd, mount the installed Linux environment, chroot into your installed environment, and then run passwd.

Well, I don't know how to change the root password without logging in as root, but let me give you a suggestion. Next time when you install any OS, and you're being asked for a password (for any user!), do this:
1. When giving a user password: type the password to the username area. This way you will see if the typed and showed passwords are the same or not. Differences can occur when the default keyboard layout of the installer differs from your keyboard's layout.
2. When giving root password: before the root password dialog type your root password somewhere, where you can verify if the typed and shown passwords are the same.

With these you can avoid such problems.

Another thing you can try if you don't want to reinstall the system again:
Set the system keyboard layout back to the default it was during installation. After that try if the password works.

Trying to log into X ??
In fact it is never? necessary to log in as root...it is not recommended
...it is dangerous, you can destroy your system...unsafe...
I can also imagine that the default "SE Linux" is preventing it.
Please use 'su' instead, after logging in as 'user'

Rgds

While I would recommend logging in as root as seldom as possible, I would not say never. You might want to try su - (su space dash) rather than just su. The dash gives you root's path. SeLinux does some strange things but I do not think we can blame this one on it.

The keyboard thing sounds reasonable to me. The only other thing I can think of is to be aware that Linux is case sensitive about everything (password is not the same as Password).