I am new to linux. Downloaded free mandriva (3 disks). Put on second drive when finished had to reboot. Problem is I get to localhost login: Do not know what to type next. I know admin word, know password and rootword, non work. Proberly something very basic but do not know. Would appreciate a little help from someone.

the localhost login, all you do is type in the username you set up while installing, probably your first name or something, press enter then type the password, that should do it. sounds like you are booting to a command prompt, so after logging in just type startx and press enter. your graphical desktop will open

if you don't have a standard user account set up, then simply type in "root" (without "") for the username then press enter and type your root password. when you startx, in the settings menu look for something that indicates configuration or similar then you can add a standard user account from there.

hope that fixes your problem mate

I thankyou for reply. Can now start mandriva but only with startx, but get there. Cannot shut down though when log out goes through motions and stops have to type something to end, not certain what though. Help appreciated.

in the configuration panel in your graphical environment there should be an option somewhere to tell the system to boot to the graphical login. sorry i don't remember which one, it's been a little while since i used mandriva

anyway, to shut the system down from the command prompt, simply type "shutdown", if that doesn't work then i'd imagine "halt" should do it (both should be input without "" )

hope that helps mate

You can also edit /etc/inittab to change the 3 to a 5 in the line "id:3:initedefault:". It might not be a 5 you need to change to (but that's what it is for most distros), check the top of the file and it will tell you (you'll want the runlevel that mentions X11).