Strange keyboard problem in rhel5
 

Hello,
dear friends I am facing a very strange problem. I am using rhel5 server release 3 in my compaq c700 laptop. Kernal version 2.6.19.6. My problem is that at login screen my keyboard not working. At every other places like in win7 ( dual boot el5+win 7) it works fine even at stratup screen in linux if I try to type something everything works fine.
What I did prior to it just tried to install oracle 10g EE release 2 and changed some files according to it like
/etc/sysctl.conf, /etc/security/limits.conf, /etc/pam.d/login and bash_profile. and created a user group oradba and a user oracle. and then restarted the system. everything seemed fine then after thet I tried to run runInstaller which showed some error which I dont remember but it required xorg-x11-deprecated-libs package so downloaded and installed and then I had to restart due to some reason so restarted but after that my whole keyboard stopped working in login screen and now I am unable to access my rhel5 and I am writing this post from win 7. please help guys I am really unable to understand how installation of oracle is related to my keyboard problem. and sorry for such a long post. lastly please forgive me for any error in my post because this is my first post

let me see if i understand
you installed OLDER versions on something ontop of the correct versions ?
if so reinstall the CORRECT RHEL5 version using "yum"

contact your paid for support that you did buy from redhat
and for the oracle 10 support ask there paid for support ( it is not a 100% "free " program )

just HOW did you install the older version of this ?? unknown named program ?
just what and HOW and from where


also keep in mind that RHEL 5 was NEVER designed or intended to be ran on a laptop
and rhel5 with a oracle 10 DB was also NEVER designed for use on a laptop

May be you are right. I am a newbie and thought of learning rhel5 and oracle so just installed everything on my lappy and started experimenting on it because I have nobody to teach me linux & I am desperate to learn. And about xorg I downloaded its rpm from net & just installed. & about support if both rhel and oracle's support are not free then there is any way i can learn free.& If both things are not designed for use on laptop and I want to learn them , then how can I learn?? lastly thanks for your reply.

ok.
A few things
1) RHEL is not free
there is a "free" version but you can not install any new software on it .There are NO security updates .The main way to install software "yum" dose not work

so buy a license - RHEL6 is the current
or use the FREE community version CentOS
http://www.centos.org/

however rhel/cent are not designed for laptops .
They will run on most but not all laptops and somethings like the sound and the microphone might need to be manually set up
CentOS and laptops are not a good mix , unless you have years of working experience .

2) the oracle database ???

unless you MUST use it for a program there is a better and FREE one MySQL
mysql is also installed in most linux distros
for example
CentOS has mysql DB, & Apache -web server installed by default ( just not turned on )


For a new user i would recommend that you install Ubuntu or Mint .
Both are designed for ease of use by new users

http://distrowatch.com/
has links to them
also the Ubuntu forum is a very good place to learn things .

also for learning some of the basics
search this forum there are links to online books and tutorials all over the place
like this one - a bit old but it covers the basics for the command line - terminal , text only ( bash, csh,zsh)
http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-G...tml/index.html
http://rute.2038bug.com/rute.html.gz
and
http://www.linux.org/lessons/


but one thing is very important
READ the documentation for what ever distro you install
both Ubuntu and Mint are very well documented

Ubuntu and Mint are recommended for newbies but the problem is that even the basic softwares like "gcc" compiler/"man" pages/"open-office" and many others (which I don't remember right now) have to be downloaded from the internet. You need to have a speedy internet connection going on.

and if due to the side effects of experimenting, you need to reinstall the OS (which I do very often), you'll again have to download all the softwares.

Therefore I recommend Mandriva: http://www2.mandriva.com/downloads/free/