Mandrake login won't exit terminal
 

I'm a recent convert from Win XP to Mandrake 10.1, so recent in fact that I haven't even logged in to Mand yet. I've completed the install and chose GNOME as my desktop. However, when the computer starts, it goes into the login prompt that looks suspiciously DOS-like: [root@localhost] etc.

I login with my admin name and get the message "Authentication service unavailable," not verbatim and it shoots me back to the terminal.

My question is this: is there something I have to do in order to get from the terminal to the desktop? Is there some command that I don't know, or is it typical that you login and it shoots you right to the desktop?

I used Redhat before I decided to go with Mandrake, and it went directly to desktop where I was prompted for login in a GUI environment. Can I do that with Mandrake?

Thanks in advance for your suggestions, unless your suggestion is "Stick with Windoze, newbie!" in which case, it kinda seems like you're preaching to the converted.

You should be able to type 'startx', which will launch the X-Windows system (GUI server) using whatever desktop environment you configured (Gnome). However the fact this isn't happening automatically isn't good, and the error msg you're getting doesn't sound good either, I'm not sure what authentication service it's talking about (the login daemon itself??).

Any errors in /var/log/messages or /var/log/boot.log?
(type 'grep -i error /var/log/messages' and 'grep -i error /var/log/boot.log')

It defaults to booting into the GUI during the installation so if its not it sounds like you're having trouble with your X windows configuration. See this section of the manual http://doc.mandrivalinux.com/Mandriv...ubleshooting-x

Once you've got the GUI working you can go into the Mandrake Control Centre and set it to boot into GUI mode by default, as described here: http://doc.mandrivalinux.com/Mandriv...autologin.html

And BTW the Linux CLI has nothing to do with DOS :)