Troubleshooting
I tried to log in using telnet as root, but received a login incorrect, and I know I used the correct password for root.
The problem is not the password, but the line in /etc/pam.d/login that calls pam_securetty.so. This line enables root to only login from those terminals listed in /etc/securetty. If you want to enable root to login using telnet (a uniformly bad idea), you'll need to comment out or remove that line. One way around this restriction is to telnet in as an ordinary user and then use the su command to become root. This is just as bad as enabling a root login using telnet. A better way would be to install and use openssh, which encrypts the entire session, including the login.
I need to upload some files as root, but ...
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