I installed Scientific Linux 6.5. Everything went smooth. But I want to boot into gui for now while I'm getting comfortable. So I edited /etc/inittab and made the default boot to level 5 instead of level 3. Now after I reboot my computer hangs on the screen with Scientific Linux 6 logo and I can't get past it.

I tried alt+f2 but I can't get back to command line. I just continues to hang. I was able to ctrl+alt+delete and reboot but it just keeps booting to the start up screen and hanging. How can I get back to the command line?

If you installed it to boot into command-line mode, then the installer will not have given you a GUI, although I can't see why it's trying to use one and not just dumping you back in the command line. If you have a live DVD of Linux, you can use that to edit the inittab in your installation and then install a GUI from the SL installation disk. But it's probably quicker to re-install SL and tell the installer you want the standard desktop.

Thanks I'll reinstall and make sure I have desktop options.

try it again.