"Sorry, Unable to set Root Password"

Rokky, I'm sorry, but I don't understand your description of the problem.

Don't quote another thread please. Rather, explain what you have done and where it stops. Have you successfully installed Mepis, or does the installation stop where you have to enter a password for root? What prompts are you seeing and what errors are you seeing?

Also, prior to installing, does the Live CD version run ok on your system? Can you log in as user demo in that way?

Please give us more details and we'll see if we can help

Jon

Rokky,

Maybe I can help a little. To set a password there is a minimum number of characters required (minimum greater than 3, usually 6-8 I'm not sure of the default on Mepis), so that explains the 'simple password' failure.

At some point during installation, you should have been asked to set the root password. How many characters did you use here?

I'm not sure you can remedy this easily without doing a reinstall.

Check the md5 sum for your CD. Mine is:

 968a2d910060786308ff9be38421166d 

And yes, Chapel Hill's servers are slow as dirt. Been that way for awhile, Maybe Duke is stealing their bandwidth.

q

Sorry Jon, I didn't hear you come in. Thought you'd be late this evening. Hope you brought dinner.

If you treat your beta-testers as if they're your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource.

Are you logging in as root when you install? I always log in as root to install. I am running the same version as you and have installed it several times with no problems. One thing i noticed, it does not want to install on extendeded partions.

Hi qtech. Yeah, I'm not getting enough sleep lately. But I'll be hitting the hay soon.

Are you serious kerry, that Lite will not install on an extended partition? What's up with that!?

Rokky, are you having fun yet

I'll see y'all in the morning. I'll bring coffee and donuts.

Jon

I tried several times to install on the extended partion. So finally i formmated and made it normal and it installed. Also the grub boot loader is different to. It dosen't add the partion #(example: (hd0,3)) so if you install more than one mepis(like i do) you have to add it yourself. So heres what my menu.1st looks like. The mepis at hdb2 is how the new grub writes the boot.
#timeout 15
color cyan/blue white/blue
foreground ffffff
background 0639a1
gfxmenu /boot/grub/message

title MEPIS at hdb2, kernel 2.6.12-586tsc
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.12-586tsc root=/dev/hdb2 nomce quiet splash=verbose vga=791
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.12-586tsc

title Windows at hda1
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

title MEPIS at hda3, kernel 2.6.12-586tsc
kernel (hd0,2)/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.12-586tsc root=/dev/hda3 nomce quiet splash=verbose vga=791
initrd (hd0,2)/boot/initrd.img-2.6.12-586tsc

title MEPIS at hda4, kernel 2.6.12
kernel (hd0,3)/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.12 root=/dev/hda4 nomce quiet splash=verbose vga=791
initrd (hd0,3)/boot/initrd.splash

#title MEMTEST
#kernel /boot/memtest86.bin

Most interesting kerry!

(Rokky, this is off-topic, so feel free to ignore this post).

Kerry, do you then modify menu.lst to add "(hd0,3)" before "/boot/vmlinuz..."?

I'm wondering if you could initially partition the drive to have multiple logical partitions, then initially install Mepis Lite into /dev/hdb2. Once it's tweaked and stable, reboot using the Live CD and move the contents from /dev/hdb2 to /dev/hdb5 or something, making the appropriate changes to GRUB before final reboot.

I think it's dumb if one needs to use this method, but if it works...

Jon

I only have to add it for the installs of this version of mepislite. The other versions have the "(hd#,#)" so that it can boot the other installs i have.I will usally use the grub boot of the last installed system. Thats a interesting idea you got for moving a installed system. I will usally just put the home account in the new partion and preserve home on install. As you can see i only use one partion(no seperate home). I have found out for the single partions you can still preserve the home, what it does is a no format install then it just deletes the old system before installing the new one. Yeah jon i know i play around with my system to much, but thats how i learn the really interesting stuff Why else would i have so many installs of the same system.

Well, he put it just as I would have put (maybe a bit better), so I would have "plagiarized", and put about the same problem description. Also, I figured that if someone knew better than I how to chase down any responses to the OP, that would have also been a help. Dunno what else I could add to his account.

I started with 8 characters, and worked my way down to 0 (and that's what the popup spacified the minimum of 2). That WAS the point at which I was asked to set the root password, and the subject is the message that then pops up ("Sorry, unable to set Root Password" - is that what you were looking for, Jon?).

Oh, and I will check the md5 sum when I get a chance next week to figure out (again) how to do that on a non-linux system (maybe with cygwin on the Win2K system where I dl'ed/burned the CD?)

AS the OP (SenorDingdong) wrote, after booting the live CD session, I log in with root/root. He really did spell out all the steps I followed, if in a bit terse form.

No, this is interesting since I am in the situation of trying to install to /dev/hda9 (or hda7 - seems the instaaller mixes them up, so I'm not sure which it was really going to). Maybe I should wait for the "final" cut to add this to my multiboot laptop? Don't really have time to sort out such arcana since I do that on "real" servers for a living, and it has gotten too old for me to go thru it much on my own time, too. Windows works "good enough", and too many Linux distors don't - unfortunately.

If you have not figured it out by now, I am trying to fly through this thread, and respond "from the hip" to all the pertinent questions - now I'm seeing that my replies are all bunched at the end, so it may be apparent at first which response I am responding to (another good reason for quoting for this forum "design" it would seem .

Well, gotta catch some winks before a 300-mile drive in the morning, and back the same way the next day, AND be standing by tomorrow night for an overnight Oracle DB security patchfest in between - at least I'm not the DBA doing the heavy lifting .

I didn't mean to snag your thread. But now i see your tring to install on a extended partion. As i stated the new mepislite don't like that, but all the other versions of mepis installed ok. Perhaps you should try mepis 3.3.2.test3 as i don't think you would want to change to normal partions as i did. Hopefully this will change on the next mepislite version and you could try again. The saving home feature is great, I switch from version to version and still can retain all my settings. At least you would have a working version of mepis while you wait for the next one.