2.4. Logging In

Now that you have a login prompt, enter your login name. At the password: prompt, enter your password.

(Note that as you are typing your password, nothing will happen on your screen. Unix does not echo your password back to you. Most programs and operating systems will not do that with passwords, as a basic security precaution against someone snooping your password from over your shoulder or even electronically. What you may find unusual, however, is that Unix will not even echo back blank characters or *s to show how many characters you have typed. This seems to disturb some people, but it's a further security precaution. Just knowing how many characters are in your password would be valuable information to someone trying to crack your account.)

After a few moments, you should receive a command prompt. You are now ready to start issuing commands. For example, the "Hello World" of the Unix community might be:

who am i