Follow TBone's advice on booting into single user mode or log in as root from a VC as spon suggests. Then run the commands:

After that you should be able to log in. All of your files will need to be moved from /home/username-bak to your new directory, but you can do that once you log into a GUI.

HTH

Forrest

i am surprised that a upgrade from fedora 6 to 9 ( skipping 7 and 8) even booted.
do a fresh install

What & more importantly how do you "VC".
I have tried to follow to the letter everything stated but my computer never looks like the advice given.
For instance, when the grub comes up & I hit the space bar I now have choices I can make ie: e for edit,a for modify, c for command-line. If I choose one of those & try to type in a suggestion....I get nowhere....either nothing types or if it does, nothing happens. I wish I'd never tried to upgrade. Everything was working fine. Now it looks like I'll loose everything and of course I have only myself to thank for that. My Bigest problem is I'm not familiar with all the ackronyms so I don't know what anyone's talking about when they say things like "VC". I have no clue what that means. Mike

OK, Do you ever get to a login prompt? If so, hit Ctrl-Alt-F1 and you should get to a Virtual Console where you should see a login prompt and be able to log in as root (if you don't get a login prompt, try Ctrl-Alt-F2). If you are able to log in as root, run the commands I sent in my last post. Then hit Ctrl-Alt-F7 and you should get back to your graphical login. After that, you will be logging in with a clean slate.

I don't know what all the fuss is about skipping versions. It should work fine and it will certainly boot. I'm guessing you have some settings for kde or gnome that aren't supported by the kde/gnome from 9. A fresh install would cause the same problems if you saved your home partition from the prior install (which you would want to do). "Fresh Install" is a last resort that you do when nothing works and you can't read your drives, not something you do at this point in the exercise.

Let me know how it goes,

Forrest

If you can get a console shell with control-alt-F1, log in as root, then page thru your xorg config file until you find the section called "Device":
What driver is listed?

Check to see if the ati drivers are installed:
You can also page thru the Xorg log file to look for the source of the error:

drchuck, if his xorg wasn't working, he wouldn't be getting the login screen. X starts before you log in if you have gdm or kdm logging you in.

If you are not getting to the gui ( 6 working 9 not) Fedora is using a NEW version of xorg and not all old 3d cards and most ATI cards are not well supported .So what is your 3d card ? this was in the release notes .

OK, Do you ever get to a login prompt? If so....Forrestt, Thanks. I'll give this a try. What I've noticed is that when I'm at a login prompt it always says "local host login ". Then I type my name & immediately get "password" all this is done via the command prompt. Once that happens.....it happens all over again...and again...and again and so on. IT feels like a Twilite Zone episode. I'll keep trying though.

My Chip set is a VIAK8M800-CE Chipset. That is all the info on graphic's I have.

OK, perhaps I'm the one that is confused.

Firstly, is the login prompt large white text on a black background or is it a box with two input lines to put your username and password into (or a pic to click on and then a password to enter)?

Secondly, when you enter your username, are you using 'root' or some other name? You need to log in as root (as your user account isn't working properly).

Lastly, the "VIAK8M800-CE Chipset" isn't what we need to know when we are asking what chip your graphics card uses. If you are seeing a colorful login screen, then X is working and we don't need to know what graphics chip you are using. If you are only seeing the black screen with large white letters, then X isn't working and we DO need to know.

Let us know,

Forrest

OK, perhaps I'm the one that is confused.....Forrestt....Your fellin my pain :>).
I do indeed have a graphical gui login however because that doesn't get me in I do the cntr alt f-1 option which will then give me the black screen with white letters. I do indeed log in(localhost login) using "root" as my name. Then I'm asked for a password. I have two, the normal password which I use normally, which is "123456" and then there's my password for admin stuff which is "myroot". I've tryed both and every time it come back with "localhost login" followed by......you guessed it "password". As far as the graphic's chip, I have no clue. I've looked in the book & everywhere else I can think of. I don't know what it is but according to what you have stated it doesn't seem to be the problem anyway.

OK, if you log in with username/password, and it doesn't come back and say, "Login Incorrect", then you are failing with your shell or some other app that it is trying to spawn. If this is happening with both your user and root, this are a bit harder to fix. You basically have two choices:

1) Boot of of your install media in rescue mode and fix the problem.

2) Reinstall the system.

I suggest that we first try option 1.

Find your install media and boot from it. You will be prompted with several options including "install the system" and "rescue" (wording may be slightly different). Choose rescue, and let the system boot. When it is done booting, you will be given a shell. Run the command:

chroot /mnt/sysimage

Next run the commands I had in my first post. After all of that reboot normally and try to log in. If this works good. If not, then well need to do a little more investigation.

Let me know,

Forrest

[QUOTE=forrestt;3370477]OK, if you log in with username/password, and it.
Forrestt, I did everything line by line:no problem until /sbin/init 6.
It returned this message: unable to send message: connection refused.
So, I rebooted and gui login appeared. attempted both username & root name & both did the same loopback. I "DID NOT" receive any login errors which I saw as a plus for some reason(previously when I tried the root & admin password I believe I received a login error). Mike

OK, when you are using "username" you are replacing that with your actual username aren't you?

Let me know,

Forrest

Yes I am.

OK, looks like it is time to boot of the cd again. Go back to the rescue mode and chroot /mnt/sysimage as you did before. Next see what shell you are using by running:

You will get a path to your shell as the result. Try to run that by typing it in and hitting enter.

Let me know any errors you get.

Forrest