Hi. I am new in using Mandrake Linux. I started a job and they gave me a computer that has Mandrake 10.1 on it. But I can't log in. I enter my password then try to log in but it takes me back to the log in screen again. It is happening for every user log in. So nobody can log in. They told me that nobody knows the root password so they may not enter and change a setting but I am not sure about that. Can anyone help me on this problem. Thanks...

You should be careful when your computer is owned by your employer, and not yourself. What you are asking to do will be viewed by some employers as hacking their PC and not go over well. Proper etiquette at work would be to call the system administrator (he is the one that knows the root pswd), else wise you may get yourself in hot water.

Edit: The person that gave you the password, that doesn't seem to work, should know the root password. He would have to use it to create the new user and password that he gave to you.

I know the root password also. My boss wanted from me to solve this problem without reinstalling the OS. There are no important files in the computer but as I said he doesn't want to reinstall the computer.

You could use a Knoppix disk to reset the password.


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Boot the Knoppix CD and mount your Linux system with read/write permissions:

sudo mount -o rw /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1

Replace hda1 with your root partition. Now run passwd under chroot, so that the passwd command changes the root password for the mounted system, and not Knoppix:

sudo chroot /mnt/hda1 passwd

follow the instructions.

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To change the password for a user instead of root:

sudo chroot /mnt/hda1 passwd username

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Hope this helps.

The password is correct. We changed the password by loggin in as root from the command line just to be sure about the password. But it didn't work with the new password again...

If you can login as root on your machine (and your sys admin says it's okay), do the following:

su
-=enter root password=-
passwd -=your username=-
-=your password=-

That should change your password.

Ok! I think I couldn't explain it. I have my password. I have every users' password and they are correct. The main problem is it doesn't allow me to log in. When I press the log in button it takes me back to the screen that shows the available users.

Ok. You said you can get to the command prompt, correct? Log in as root and type the following:

This will reinstall KDM, the graphical login manager.

If you can successfully login in as yourself and root at the command prompt, then it is most likely a problem with KDM.