Quick Question
 

Okay I am semi new to the Linux world, but have dabbled in it here and there. I have just installed Mandrake 9.0 on several machines both at home and work so I can once again start my quest of actually knowing what I am doing with this OS. I am a programmer and am thus compeled to actually give back to the computing world. Anyway, I had several installs go very well, only a modem problem on one machine that I have yet to take the time to figure out. On my main work machine yesterday I was able to get my horrible HP machine to finally allow for a repartition and started the install. The problem occured when the install never let me set my root password or set up a user. I figured no problem logged in as root set up my password and went to add in users. I added one in, logged out, and attempted to log in as that user. Failed login each time. I came back on as root tried to edit that user and got a ptmp and gtmp error. Went and found the lock files and got rid of them, erased the user added him in this time with adduser rather than the mandrake gui. I user passwd to set the password and tried again, same crap. Deleted the lock files again did it again, set no password this time to see if that would help still failed. Anyway, my questions is would it be easier to do a reinstall and let the setup fix whatever problem its having?? Any quick help would be appreciated.


Ryan

Hmm. I haven't got mandy, but do the logfiles give you any clue? Have a look in /var/log

Which log file would you suggest I start my search in??

/var/log/messages

Didn't see anything there, and I started getting some funny messages all over the place, so I decided to just reinstall. Worked great this time and everythign is up and running. Thanks for the help.