setting root password during liveCD installation
 

While trying to set the root password during liveCD installation, something happened that I've never seen a liveCD do. When I entered a new root password for the hard drive installation, the installer apparently changed the liveCD's root password to that as well. I repeated this to see if it was an error; it happened again. If VectorLinux is supposed to do this, it makes no sense.

Live CDs often do not have any password. Also, once you are running the "live" Linux from RAM, you typically don't need a password for anything.

Point being: In all my Linux installs, this could have happened many times and I would never have known it.

You're right, the VectorLinux liveCD has no password. But it's still peculiar that when I entered a password for the new hard drive installation, the liveCD began using that password.

Depending on the distro and version you may or may not have a password for root.

I agree that it is odd. Not a common thing but as noted, I may have never noticed it.

I'm intrigued. Is this with an actual CD (not a Live USB)? And if you boot it in another machine or after a complete shutdown, it now has a root password? That would seem to imply some persistent data that shouldn't be possible on a CD.

Yes, it's a CD. But I haven't tried shutting it down. I know the root password changed only because after I entered a root password for the hard drive installation, I eventually tried to perform some root function on the liveCD (during the same session), and the previous password (nothing; you just pressed enter) had changed.