SAMS Teach Yourself Unix in 10 Minutes

Text-Based Login

Text-based login takes us right to where we want to go: to the command line or shell prompt.

Something that can be confusing to Unix learners is that text-based login screens vary between Unix distributions (also commonly nicknamed distros), and although login screens are becoming more similar, they are still different enough to cause annoyance to most new users. Most text-based Unix login prompts look like this:

login:
password:

When you see the login: prompt, type your username and press return. The password: prompt appears immediately thereafter. When you have successfully typed in both your username and password, you reach what is called a shell prompt. This is the most common way you will see login and password prompts, ...