I had similar problems in a Knoppix installation. I don't know anything about SUSE but maybe you can try this. Use vi or anything else for following. 1. To enable non-root login in text mode file: /etc/pam.d/login -> comment out the line "auth requisite pam_nologin.so" Now for GUI 2. To enable gui login for root file: /etc/inittab -> append following at end of file "x:5:respawn:/usr/bin/kdm -nodaemon" This is for KDE. Check the path and that switch may not ne needed. 3. To enable non-root gui login file: /etc/pam.d/kdm ->comment out the line "auth required pam_nologin.so"