X windows
 

When my PC boots I am met with a graphical log in on RedHat 8 log in no problem and KDE starts, everything ok. When I hit ctrl+alt+F1 ,I get a text log in, log in as root or any other user no problem .Type startx and am greeted with a fatal server error:- Server is already active for display 0 .Can you only have 1 X windows working at any 1 time? I have 512MB of Ram and also a newbie........ Any help will be most welcome

Try
Cheers,
Tink

Its because you are booting in graphical mode...which starts the X-Server. So when you switch to console, you don't shut it down...you just switch to another terminal that's all.

Hence, when you type 'startx' you're trying to start X-Server again...and it can't. Just use your ctl-alt and either f5,f6 or even f7 (try em til you find it) and you'll go back to it.

There's a way I think to have multiple X-windows running, but I don't know how you'd do that (try google) ...I also don't know WHY you'd do that really...

you could also login to the console, and kill your gui login on display 0

killall xdm #or gdm, or whatever

then it should work

As for multiple X windows:
startx -- :1 #use ctrl-alt-F8 to get there
startx -- :2 #F9
#etc.

OR...another alternative

go to console, log on as root (or use su - ) and type:

init 3

and this will kill X and put you in runlevel 3.

Thanks for the advice everything's ok ,thought it'd be something simple