Hi - hope someone can help/advise with this; warning... any remedies which involve CLI, logs &c will need to be noob-oriented, as I am reasonably techie but *by no means* good at Linux/UNIX...

Background: I'm running JDS on a Toshiba laptop. It's been working fine for about 18 months. This morning the boot process started failing to complete...

Symptoms: JDS normally boots (Suse) Linux, up to the point where 'raw' Linux would require a command-line login. At this point (normally) it launches a separate splash screen with a graphical login prompt (I think it's either GDM or XDM which is used for this)... and thence to the Gnome desktop.

What's happening to me is that at the 'command line login' step, the screen briefly flicks to black, then redisplays the command line login. This happens three times and then stops happening, leaving the 'verbose' CLI screen displayed.

Among the last messages in the 'verbose' bootup sequence are the following:

Starting service gdm failed
...
Failed services in runlevel 5 ITtouchpad xdm
Skipped services in runlevel 5 smbfs ypbind


Please can anyone help/advise?

Thanks in advance...

racingsnake

Hi,

here is a solution :

Boot from the CD, select Rescue from the menu and let the machine boot.

Log in as root once the machine has booted. There is no root password.

Mount /dev/hda5 on /mnt (mount /dev/hda5 /mnt)

Run 'echo "root:PASSWORD" | chroot /mnt chpasswd' (where PASSWORD is your desired root password)

Reboot.

The machine will boot to an "iWork login:" prompt.

Log in as root using the password you just set

Type init 3 to bring the machine to a state that allows the X configuration tool to run.

Run "sax2 -m 0=fbdev" to configure X to use the generic driver.

Run "sax2" and configure the X server manually.

Once you are happy with your X server configuration, test it and save it.

Reboot.

:-)

cheers

You could also try the "Failsafe" Grub boot menu choice - the third choice on a single boot machine.

This will often fix a glitch like you describe.

GDM is the Gnome Display Manager like KDM is the KDE one (not on JDS).

Get back to us on this thread if neither of these suggestions work

Best of luck mate.

Richard in Australia

Hi all -

Just a quick post to thank everyone who has posted replies/suggestions. I've managed to fix the problem, with a little help from some colleagues; as best I can state it, the problem was this:

- somehow, the settings for the display and graphics adapter had got screwed up; as a result, the display/UI subsystem thought that it couldn't find a valid display device, and so the graphical desktop (GDM/XDM) couldn't load. Because the GDM login requires that level of GUI to be successfully initiated, it couldn't complete, so dumped me back to the command line interface.

- fortunately, I was still able to log in as root at that command line interface, so could invoke tools like YAST2 and SAX2. I had to experiment a little with the screen resolutions these would let me choose, and then guess which of the listed display adapters would be the best match for the (unlisted) one in the laptop.

- eventually I found a working combination, and things are now back to normal.

Phew.

Thanks again for all the suggestions and help.

Yrs.,
Robin

Well done.

What you described should have triggered my memory, as it has happened several times to me with "exotic" on-board video.

I even had the unbelievable situation where the Live CD that Linux Format magazine (I think) put out had later drivers, which correctly identified the graphics "card" on-board on a particular motherboard, whereas the 3 installation CDs of the "real" product required accepting 1024x768x16bit on a 19-inch monitor, and then needed fiddling with SaX2 from effectively a command prompt.

You did say you didn't want suggestions that involved the CLI though, lol

Congratulations again hope it goes well for you.

As an afterthought, are you aware that while Version 3 is dead, even though the beta phase was succesful, GCClinux is developing an opensource follow-on? I'm looking forward to when beta ISOs are available to play with

Richard in Australia.

Well, it's alive and well on Solaris 10

Calum, I do so wish that I could get Solaris 10 to run properly. I have installed it on two different computers, both with MSI motherboards, one having a 64-bit processor.

It gives every indication it has installed okay, but it doesn't recognise the existence of any other HDDs or partitions, nor my NIC, which makes it pretty useless for my doing more than drool at that green desktop

I can't even copy the wallpaper to a JDS-2 distro either

I installed it from the DVD that came with Linux User and Developer magazine, Issue 54, and have tried installing several times to each, even on different HDDs.

I wonder if you have you have heard of that problem with anyone else?

Try Solaris Express for latest drivers.

I'm running Solaris Express on an PC with an MSI mainboard and an AMD64 CPU, and there is no issue with my SATA, IDE disks and USB disks.

Yikes! What is this? I bet that would be a good development system for Java Studio Creator!

BrandZ (Solaris Containers for Linux Applications) DVD 35

http://www.sun.com/download/products.xml?id=44247cfd

Not sure to get the link between BrandZ and Java Studio Creator

Anyway, I am using this build 35 based BrandZ build since a last april and it is really cool.
It's also funny to confuse people when asking them what is really running on my laptop.

Just beware there are some annoying bugs, like a non working DNS.

A new release is to be out shortly that will fix that.