I am a newborn newbie. This is my first install of a Linux server. I am working on the AWS EC2 SUSE Enterprise. I successfully installed the server and had it up and running, mostly successfully, with a LAMP package. However, my PHP didn’t seem to work, so in Googling around I saw that you do updates using the “zipper patch” command, which I executed as ‘root’ user, with no password, as this is just a trial/development exercise for me. Foolishily, I did not read the thousands of lines of text that flashed on the screen during the installs. When it completed, it said I needed to reboot, which I did, and when I tried to log in again, I was prompted for a password! I never entered any password during the “zipper patch” install, and prior to that I had no password on my root account, which is the only account I have been working with.
So what the hell is going on? does Linux just arbitrarily throw passwords on accounts when it patches things? How can I remedy this situation and find my password? Is there a 'default" password for SUSE Linux root accounts? I tried all the usual stuff: no password, admin, password, root, Linux, but no luck. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
There is no password set by that zypper patch.
Are you suing the GUI, and when yes, KDE, Gnome, …?
When you use only the console, you could try to hit Return on being asked for a password. When you say you have none, that should work.
At installation, you are asked to create a user,. Did you do so? And have you given it a password? Did you try that password for root?
Also at installation you are asked to use the same password as for that user also for root. What was your answer?
And, you should NOT login as root. Allways login as a normal user and then use commands like
su -
to become root.
It is not clear if you use the GUI, but you should NEVER login in the GUI as root. Allways login as a normal user and then start e.g. a terminal for being root.
Read: http://en.opensuse.org/SDB%3ALogin_as_root
But the most intersting thing you say is
http://AWS EC2 SUSE Enterprise
These are the openSUSE forums and all my remarks above are about openSUSE, not about SLES/SLED.
You will find the SLES/SLED forums at https://forums.suse.com/forum.php
On 2014-04-04 19:36, hcvv wrote:
>
> There is no password set by that zypper patch.
It is possible, though, that a patch disallowed the empty password. It
is possible that there was a bug that accepted an empty password as
valid, and when the bug was patched, it was no longer accepted. Just a
theory.
That’s just a guess.
Another guess would be that there is a cron job doing security checks
and disallowed the empty password.
I would follow the documented procedure on the openSUSE wiki to set a
new root password - but the OP is not using openSUSE… so all my
guesses could be wrong.
> But the most intersting thing you say is
>> http://AWS EC2 SUSE Enterprise
> These are the openSUSE forums and all my remarks above are about
> openSUSE, not about SLES/SLED.
> You will find the SLES/SLED forums at https://forums.suse.com/forum.php
Indeed. 
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Minas Tirith))