Hi, I'm using Redhat 7.1 with gnome, and I was logged on, and two hours later I saw the login screen. That was weird, (I didn't logged out) but I tried to log in again and I only can see a grey screen and and X (the mouse pointer), but nothing else. The pointer moves, but nothing works, I've tried a lot of keystrokes (maybe I can kill X-window and re-start it from the command prompt?) without any result.

I guess there was some problem with the RAM memory, and it crashed. Before I turn the server off, is there something I can do?

P.S. The server is running fine, I just can´t work on it ...

ctrl-alt-backspace should kill X, give that a shot and see if you can't restart X again without any problems.

Thanks a lot! Now everything's normal. Very helpful!

Doesn't ctrl-alt-backspace kill X but then immediately runs it again? I get this when after booting your computer you first login using the gui environment and not the text login. If this is how one logs in, how then, can we effectively kill X to go back into the text prompt?

zLinuxz

to change the default boot to text mode other than GUI edit this file

/etc/inittab there will be an entry similar to this

id:5:initdefault:

change the 5 to 3 , then restart the computer, now the system directly boots to text mode. I've tried this in redhat and mandrake

press CTR - ALT - F[n]
then log in as root. then:
# init 3

this takes you to run level 3, ie multiuser with no X.

glalu, I'm not talking about when you reboot, I'm talking when you are already using X, how do you kill it and go back just to command prompt without rebooting. cntrl-alt-backspace it's an instant restart of X, it does not shut it down, unless you ran X off of a command prompt.
gusgorman, when I type init 3 is that going to close the X which is on the other console? or will that make the computer reboot in runlevel 3??

zlinuxz

zLinuxz

To answer your question, I do believe in most cases it does restart the X server usually only if you are in runlevel 5 that starts X at bootup. If your in runlevel 3, usually it will just kill it and bring you to a command prompt.

so just edit your /etc/inittab file the way glalu told you earlier.

But like, even if you are in runlevel 5 at bootup time and you log through the gui prompt, you can switch screen to the prompt with control-alt-f(n). So, then when you are just using text, can you kill the X server like if it was a process?

zlinuxz