I thought I would try Ubuntu, so I booted a system from a Ubuntu 7.10 Desktop CD I created from the .iso file I downloaded. The system didn't have access to a DHCP server, so I needed to manually set the network information for the system. But I didn't know the default password assigned to the root account by Ubuntu. I discovered at Ubuntu Default Root Password or the sudo way that the root account is created without a predefined password and that you can't log into it. The suggested action for gaining root access was to use
sudo sh, which did give me root access. I was then able to
assign an IP address, network mask, and default gateway address.
# ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.5 netmask 255.255.255.0
# route add default gw 192.168.1.1 eth0
