(Resolved and many thanks) Gulp...won't allow me to enter password to change settings.

Beau, don't panic.

When you were running Mepis from the Live CD (before installation), there were two accounts: demo, and root. The password for demo was "demo", and the password for root was "root".

However, once you installed Mepis to your computer, you were asked to create at least one regular user and to enter a password for root. So, you had to have created at least one user name (I will assume "beau" for this thread), and you had to enter a password for root (I will assume "badpassword" for this thread).

So when you are about to do "administrative duties" such as adding package, making changes to your system anything that could compromise stability or security of your system you will be prompted for ROOT'S password. Other distros, such as Ubuntu, use a slightly different security approach and use a command called "sudo". When this tool is used YOUR REGULAR PASSWORD is required when prompted.

Jon

SimplyMEPIS Value CD: $17.95
Amount saved not buying Windows Vista Ultimate: $399
Experience gained learning Mepis and helping others: Priceless

Hi Beau,
Are you sure password is being entered in small letters or capitals with whatever you originally did it with. Sometimes I accidently hit caps lock key and it wont accept until I change back to small letters.
If this is not the case I will look around for password reset solution.

some little boxes for passwords don't 'echo' any stars to the screen
so you could be putting in the password and not seeing it.

Thanks Jon & John M. I hope I'm not asking too many questions in this forum.

Unfortunately I can't enter anything in the Password field. The cursor just blinks there. No matter what I type, caps on or off, nothing is entered.

If I click ignore it says, "changes in this section require root access."

Even if I got a change to my password it still will not be enterable.

I might have changed a setting concerning logons before and messed up this installation. Perhaps I should use GParted and format my /root, swap, and /home partitions and reinstall MEPIS. Can that be done?

Thanks again.

Beau Langer

if you have anything special on the /home; choose preserve /home
it isn't necessary to reformat - the installer will do that for you

(and no, you don't win the prize for 2006 for how many questions in this forum, entries are being taken now for 2007)

would you go to the kmenu
switch user
start new session
and see if you can logon as root there
because if so, you will be able to make you alterations there and then return to Ctrl-Alt-F7 (usual user, where you logged on before)

Aaaah, I'm a little embarassed but I did switch user and I did type in my password, even though it wasn't displaying. That worked. I found a setting that puts an * for every password character entered.

I can't thank you wonderful folks enough. SUPERB!

Beau Langer

its much easier to ask than never find out