Slackware64-15.0 installed using EFI on the ThinkPad T430. After I rebooted and tried logging in as root. The password (successfully entered during installation) was not accepted.

After multiple tries I shut down the machine and booted from the USB installation drive. Changed root's password by entering it twice again and rebooted. Again attempts to log in failed.

I've not had this happen in the 19 years I've run Slackware on desktops and laptops, nor in the six years before that running another distro.

I'm stymied because I don't know why this happened so I've no idea how to fix the problem as so far root is the only user known to the system.

Your keyboard is mapped differently after the reboot. To prove this, either use an onscreen virtual keyboard or set the password to numbers and use the number keys.

jobby23,

The keyboard is the default one; I explicitly set it that way, too, and changed root's password to 6 digits. Still no joy.

This T430 is a refurbished unit that came wind windoze10 installed. Even though I repartitioned the HDD with cgdisk there might be some well-hidden M$ cruft in the 100K partition that cannot be deleted.

So, I'll replace the HDD with a Samsung EVO 850 SDD I have and start over. I'll leave this thread unresolved until I reinstall 15.0 on the SDD.

Thanks.

Still worth trying the onscreen keyboard, in my past life fixing laptops login problems when someone was sure they knew the password came down to some kind of issue with the keyboard.

I actually replaced the repartitioned HDD with a Crucial SSD, installed 15.0 and root's password. Rebooted and have no issues logging in as root.

I wouldn't be surprised if, despite repartitioning, the HDD has some left over cruft from M$ that caused the problem.

Thanks for the suggestions,

Rich

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