Unlike some other operating systems, your Red Hat Linux system uses accounts
to manage privileges, maintain security, and more. Not all accounts are
created equal: some accounts have fewer rights to access files or
services than others.
If you have already created and logged into a user account, you can
skip ahead to Chapter 2. If you created only the root
account, read on to learn how to set up a user account.
If you did not create a user account during installation, you must
log in as root. After you create a user account, it is highly
recommended that you log in as that user instead of root.
 | Caution |
|---|
| | Because your Red Hat Linux system creates the root account
during installation, some new users are tempted to use only this
account for all their activities. This is a bad idea. Since the root
account is allowed to do anything on the system, you can easily damage
your system by accidentally deleting or modifying sensitive system
files. You may be tempted to forego creating and using a user account
during or after installation, but this is risky.
|
During installation, if you selected graphical as the login type and
GNOME as the default desktop, you will see a graphical login screen as
shown in Figure 1-3. Again, unless you have chosen
to give your machine its own hostname, which is primarily used in a
network setting, your machine will proabably be called
localhost.
During installation, if you selected graphical as the login type and KDE
as the default desktop, you will see the KDE graphical login screen
as shown in Figure 1-4 instead.
To log in as root from either graphical login screen, type
root at the login prompt, press
[Enter], type the root password that you chose during
installation at the password prompt, and press
[Enter]. To log in as a regular user, type your username
at the login prompt, type your password that you selected when creating
the user at the password prompt, and press [Enter].
Logging in from the graphical login screen automatically starts the X
Window System (the graphical interface) for you.
During installation, if you selected text as the login type, you will
see a login prompt similar to the following after booting your system:
Red Hat Linux release 7.3
Kernel 2.4.18-0.1 on an i686
localhost login: |
Unless you have chosen to give your machine its own hostname, which is
primarily used in a network setting, your machine will proabably be
called localhost.localdomain.
To log in as root from the console, type root at
the login prompt, press [Enter], type the root password
that you chose during installation at the password prompt, and press
[Enter]. To log in as a regular user, type your username
at the login prompt, press [Enter], type your password
that you selected when creating the user at the password prompt, and
press [Enter].
After logging in, you can type the command startx to
start the X Window System graphical interface.
