RE: login and terminal character recognition

["Steve Barr" <steve@cgpsystems.com>]

> Now I know this has something to do with the virtual terminal not
> recognising the keys properly when I type them.  It must be that the
> word "root" doesn't have enough characters for the terminal to detect
> what type it should be emulating? or something?????  When I type in my
> username to login which has more chars, then it obviously gets enough
> characters to figure out how it should initialise itself?????

It is more likely related to the /etc/securetty file.  

The first couple lines of my file read:

# /etc/securetty: list of terminals on which root is allowed to login.
# See securetty(5) and login(1).

Steve