Please help me!
I have recently installed fedora core 6 on my laptop, and I am dual booting it with Vista (just in case I need something on windows). However, when I boot into linux, sometimes I will get a gui login screen (after linux is loaded) and everything works fine - I can use gnome or KDE or do what I want. Other times (and this happens randomly, sometimes not for ages, and then for a couple of times in a row) I get a text login, and get sent straight to a shell. From there I have tried to start gnome and KDE but I get told they are already started. Please tell me how I can fix this problem.

it odd, you sure during start pc you are not choosing recovery mode?

definitely sure. I do the same every time - just start the computer and either let grub time out or just choose linux straight away (it doesn't make a difference what I do) and then let fedora load up. Once it has loaded the screen goes blank for a moment (always) and then the cursor appears - if it is the normal arrow with the rotating blue dots then I get a gui login, but if it is just the cross then I get a shell login. I have installed fedora 3 times now on the same machine (I stuffed up the system the first two times, but the problem occured before that already), and the third time I even got the text login after I did the first time configuration - it went straight to the text login rather than gui.

when u enter text mode, have u see and error msg from Xsever?

nope; no error message, it just boots in like nothing was wrong

For some reason you may have booted into a virtual console instead of the getting the login screen

When you are at the text login , login and then issue the command :
runlevel
to check to see what runlevel you are actually in ,if it is runlevel 5 , then you will be in a virtural console.

If you are in runlevel 5 , then log out and then try hitting [Alt-F7] to see if you can get back to the login screen.




.

xserver logs to /var/log/Xorg.0.log, could you post all of this so we can check it out, any problems with xserver will be logged here.

Thanks guys for helping me.
I haven't yet checked the log, but I have discovered that it is indeed sending me to one of the virtual consoles. I pressed <ctrl>-<alt>-<f7> and got the login screen that I was after; I don't know why but it must just decide to send me to a virtual console for some reason.

Check your entries in the menu.1st or grub.conf file for a rougue entry on the line to boot linux.

Dear all,

I have the same problem. Sometimes, although I boot to init 5, and X starts normally (I can even see the nvidia splash screen), it presents me a text console instead of the gui login.
It's ok, I can press alt+f7 to go the the graphical login, but still, this is not the expected operation and would like to know the reason for that.
The bug seems to be totally rnadom for me...
Any ideas?

Thanks,
Peter

Post the entries from your menu.lst file so that people can see how the grub menu is set up.

The beauty that is linux, if the xserver fails for any reason it will fall back to a console so you can still access the system to do repairs.

Here is how my menu.lst looks like:

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You do not have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg.
# root (hd0,1)
# kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda2
# initrd /boot/initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,1)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.18-1.2798.fc6)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6 ro root=LABEL=/1 noapic rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6.img
title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

It's a default Fedora Core 6 menu.lst, the only thing I touched is that I labeled the second entry to Windows insteal of Other.

Do you see any strange?

Thanks,
Peter

I might be wrong but I suppose a_m0d is having the same problem as me.
And beleive me, the xserver actually starts, but despite this, it switches to a text login in the very last moment. When I press alt+f7, it switches to the GUI instantly.
Of course if it fails, it won't display, we know that.

Best regards,
Peter

That's good , having to be able to see your menu.lst file can be helpful.
Firstly a minor thing , comment out the hiddenmenu command so that you can get the grub menu to display on the screen.


I think that your problem could be in your kernel boot parameters and using the noapc option.

I don't know enough about your system hardware , but it looks like there is a problem with the noapic option which could be causing a conflict and dumps you straight to a shell to fix it.

Do a search for the noapic kernel option to see if you can find a connection with your system hardware setup.