Yes, I reinstalled with a set of Slackware disks. Works much better now.

Seriously, Thanks for the help but I'm not up for another few hours at this.

No, not you Mr. Hijacker! I was talking to the original poster. Your problem has been resolved with your Slackware installation.

yep i tried re-insalling several times and using different options like KDE and GNOME etc but same result...gonna try wiping the hard drive clean i guess before going for another install.

Hi , sorry if this is another hijacking but I am experiencing exactly the same problem. I installed several times playing with different options :
- fresh complete install of OpenSuse 10.2
- source : DVD which came with Linux Magazine Feb 2007
- target machine : Sony VAIO laptop PCG FX170K and

The install went all the way to the end, without ever giving me the chance to create a user account.

The reboot prompts for username / pwd and wouldnt move past that no matter what.

I have installed and used other distros in the past and I am an old time (SunOS) Unix guy, so I'm pretty sure I'm not doing anything that is obviously wrong or stupid.

Please help ! Thanks for your time.

I purchased my cdrom/dvd set from Novel directly. I have installed it and re-installed it on 3 computers from cdrom and dvd. It has always ask me for a root password when being installed and when brought up always ask for a user name and password. (It was purchased because I use dial-up before anyone asks).

See my long letter on this problem.

OK, my first reply got posted, so now I'll type out the big one.

Once again, I have the same problem as Greenleaf1, i.e., once I have installed SuSE 10.2, I end up at the blue username and password screen, but can't log on.

I have made the following unsuccessful efforts to solve it (not necessarily in this order):

I have first downloaded SuSE 10.0 with its root password, username and password set, then have done an update with the SuSE 10.2.

I have run the installation program to the "Installation Mode" (new installation and update) screen where there is an "Other Options" choice. I check Other Options and then check "Boot Installed System." This takes me, after I click on another "Boot" button, to a "Give root password for login:" line. Here I have typed root and set the root password, then added a user with the useradd command and set this user's password.

Because this didn't work, of course I went back and fooled some more. I have tried to add new users, changed passwords. Then I get inconsistent answers to my commands, saying either the one username does already exist or it does not. It doesn't make any difference either way.

(Today, Saturday, I also ran the Installation program to the Installation Mode screen, checked Other Options, then "Repair Installed System," then clicked on "Automatic Repair." [There were also Customized Repair and Expert Tools buttons.] Some repairs did seem to be made, and I learned a little, but I still am unable to get beyond the username and password login screen.)

I have also resorted to the "Rescue System" option on the Installation Menu Screen in much the same way. Clicking on this you eventually wind up on a "Rescue login:" line. Here you must first type "root," and then you can (sometimes) assign "root" a new password by typing passwd. This doesn't make any difference. (Here you can do a few commands like "cd /" then ls -aF to read the root directory, for what this is worth.)

I have also tried the "openSuSE 10.2 (Failsafe)" option in the bootup menu. This time I came to a "Linux login:" line, which turns out to be our blue username and password login screen, only black and in text mode.

ANOTHER BIT OF INFORMATION:
I have a Dell Optiplex GX1, and respondents in the SUSE Forums.net have stated they had problems because the Optiplex has integrated graphics chips, and somehow the SuSE 10.2 installation doesn't play with this. I have received the message during installation (as have others) that my system "does not fulfill all requirements. There is less than 96 MB memory or X server could not be started." (Still, my machine has fully 512 Mb RAM) and so I can't do the graphical installation, I have to do the Text Only installation. The Text Only installation doesn't ask me for a root password and username and password, so the new software can't of course record such, so when I come to the username and password logon, I get an error message and can't log on.

One or more people have said they added a graphics card and that enabled a successful graphical installation.

Novell has said their download and installation tests have been successful, and suggests that the ISO image (a single file that contains not only all a program's data files but also all the filesystem metadata [boot code, structures, and attributes] See Wikipedia article) can get corrupted on download from the Internet and also when burning to DVD particularly from Windows when it has other programs running. This agent has said that he has never heard of this happening twice in a row to a person.

A respondent in the SUSE Forums.net also said that there were problems with burns of the ISO image to DVD. He suggests doing a second burn.

So possibly if I can get my vendor to cooperate in this work of burning new DVDs, I can eventually get this software to work.

But I would like a more precise and reliable answer to this. I suspect that so far people are just making good guesses.

Furthermore when people say to type in commands like init=/bin/bash, I would like to know precisely where I am to type them.

One respondent replying to someone with Debian Linux suggested using a live CD (i.e. a full but scaled down version of Linux) of Knoppix and typing in commands on it, but to be successful you have to mount the correct drive partition. And why couldn't you just do the same with the Boot or Rescue Option in the SuSE installation.

Anyways I'm sure that there is someone somewhere who has solved this problem without spending a small fortune. (I've done a quick check here [Toronto, Canada] at one store which sells a 64 MB graphics card for $59, not counting tax.)I would like to hear from him or her.

With bated breath,
sluggingaway1

oki problem resolved..kinda

I have sadly given up on suse for now and installed Linspire 5.0 and it works just great. Thanks Micro420 for your help and ideas, i will return to suse again when i can muster the will power

Well, here's the resolution in my case.

For the old Sony VAIO PCG 170K, I gave
up installing OpenSUSE and after some
digging for other distros, I stumbled
upon Puppy Linux.
Boy, I had everything
up and running in less than 20 min.
(including the download of the ~180Mb ISO !!)
It recognized everything, it installed
without a glitch. Give it a try if you
have an older PC, you won't be dissapointed.

Now, on my brand new Dell D620 laptop I went and
dowloaded SLED 10 (SUSE Linux Enterprise
Desktop) from Novell, because everywhere I read
about it, it is considered the most serious
contender for windoze, in an enterprise
environment.
They have a dowloadable trial version , and you
pay only $50 for one year of full support and
unlimited upgrades.

And sure enough, I was blown away. Needless to say
I started very biased by my sour taste remaining from
the OpeSUSE experience. But let me tell you : this is
where the little boys are separated from the men.
This thing absolutely rocks. It installed like
a breeze, automatically configured everything
including wireless, including bluetooth, including
some external hard drives, external DVD unit
everything , no fuss , no kerfuffle , just like
an enterprise-quality product should .

Needless to say, the 3D graphics worked out of the
box (with all the spectacular Apple-ish effects)
and it was able to access my office through VPN like
it's nobody's business.

I confortably opened a Terminal Server Client, and sure
enough I have a full blown windoze desktop in a Linux
window, thus controling one of my servers at work.

To all the engineers behind SLED : KUDOS and a big
bow for you !!! You guys showed them how it's done !

(clap) (clap) (clap)

I had the same problem as Suggingaway1. There seems to be a problem (bug) in the installer when it kicks you into the text-mode. When the install reboots (before entering root password), the install tries to start the graphical install (at least on mine). The graphical install fails, and the system "defaults" to booting. However, there's no user/root so logging doesn't work (I got to the root prompt in rescue and couldn't add a user).

I was able to fully install by choosing a text base system (not Gnome, not KDW, choose "other" and Text, not minimal graphical). Then I logged on and ran "yast2" to install KDE, XOrg, etc.

My problem now is that I'm stuck as to how to configure Xorg to run on my i810-based-old-old-laptop. I will rtm next chance i get, but if anyone has some pointers... I'd be glad to take a shotcut on this one.

Thnaks

so, what is the solution? I can login as root, but the username I created simply could not log in.

This is funny... in a 'holy crap this annoying' sort of way. Just installed openSUSE 10.2 from DVD that I torrent'd several weeks ago. I didn't have my mouse connected so I didn't get the xwin installation menu. I ran through the 10 minutes or so of installation options using the keyboard. Selected GNOME for desktop. I did change my partition suggestions to force a repartitioning of my two hda's to be a clean install.

One hour and a reboot later... Got gnome login screen but never had a change to create a root acct. I'm no linux kernel developer here, but I have installed Fedora about 100 times from FC-2 all the way up. I support several BSD systems at work although not my primary function. I've even hacked around a few Checkpoint Secure Platform (rhel clones) systems. I'm pretty certain I would have picked the option that said "Create root account" versus the "spend an hour of your life and get nowhere" option.

I'll post again if I figure it out... although it does look to be a bug with the installer. Good luck all...

My best advice is to grab Suse 10.3 Alpha 1, i heard that it is stable! OR Suse 10.1 could be better too!

Ok... thanks to Mitchcat. I think his suggestion to try a text-based system worked for me. For some reason I could not get a full graphical yast to start. I thought it was my mouse, since I was using a USB and didn't think usb mouse was being detected properly. I connected a PS2 mouse and got the same warning about xwin not starting so text-frontend for yast has started... yadayadayada. (Using an older, but very popular, Intel desktop motherboard with integrated graphics, 256MB PC133, 1GHz pentium-III, plenty of hdd. Had FC-5 and Win2K running on this same system over the years.)

Anyway... I ran up and down the installation options before chosing the "Other - Text based" option. 45 minutes of package adds, one reboot later... the first screen waiting for me was enter root password. Did so and went on to network configuration. I'm updating Novell repositories now. I'll ssh in after a few minutes and get this party started. Thanks, yall...

btw... no thanks to Novell's opensuse site. Pretty lame search there. I think a search for '10.2 login password problem yast' got me meeting minutes. I love it when popular user forums like Linuxquestions.org is all over gliches like this, but corporate sponsored support databases don't have a single relevant hit. (At least I didn't pay $300 to the world's richest man for the pleasure of searching the disinformation database... I digress.)

tkit have you solved your problem after all?