I am running red hat 8 on my desktop machine @ work. Yesterday, the machine locked up completely. I then had to go out on a service call so I reset the machine. When I returned, the pc was going between the text login prompt and trying to start the graphical login (XWindows?).

How can I fix this? I have tried linux rescue from the redhat cd and used fsck -f to fix the filesystem and it goes through everything fine. Is there a way to reconfigure x so i can get my video back and if so how do I do this from a command line?

Please help, I don't like to use windows!!!!!

I don't understand exactly what you mean here. Is it booting to runlevel 3 or 5?

runlevel 5. It gets to the text login prompt which comes up before the graphical login and the goes automatically to the redhat login. Problem is, I can see it trying to bring up the graphical login but the screen just goes blank and then it goes back to the text login and then repeats this process all over again.

When you log in (in console mode) and try "startx" does X work?

I actually got logged in through a text login the last time i booted up and sent it a ctrl-alt-delete to restart the system. I noticed shutting down xfs failed. could this have anything to do with it?

Also, how would I get it to boot up to a text login instead of the graphical login. Maybe I could do more troubleshooting this way.

Hi, i don't have a solution, but i do have a question. I'm rather stupid about Linux so if u could help me in detail that would be wonderful.

well, my situation is this: I have a dual boot system set up on my computer. I try to boot Linux redhat 7.3 it goes through all it's checks and OK's everything. it goes up to runlevel 5 as well. well, when it finishes booting, it's supposed to bring up the graphical login prompt. it doesn't though, i get abosolutely NOTHING. no text prompt either. just a blank screen that toggles between black and dark grey. when i restart the computer, and tries shutting off everything, it says failure shutting down xfs. please please help me if u can. thank you!

That is exactly what mine does except that while switching between black and dark grey, it will show the text login prompt.


Any suggestions? It was working fine earlier in the day yesterday...

Can you get to a shell prompt? If so the first thing I would do is edit your /etc/inittab file and switch to runlevel 3. Then try 'startx' and see what errors it spits out. Your XConfiguration probably got corrupted somehow.

How did you get to a text login last time?

If you can do it again, no problem, just don't do ctrl-alt-delete, look around a bit Try startx, chances are you'll get a clear error message (or clearer anyway).

If you can't do it again...the quickest way I can think of is to get out a rescue CD (Since use Mandrake, you should be able to use the CD) and boot to command line (hit F1 at the prompt when booting the CD and it will show you your options for booting, you need to type 'rescue')

Once at a command line, you need to go into /etc and edit the file inittab (search the forum, there's tons of examples...I don't know what to change by heart).

can u even login through text mode?

i read somewhere that when starting ur computer, when u get to GRUB loader, "you hit X or whatever and type 'linux s' ". that's what the person wrote. i assume he means type 'X', but i tried that and nothing happened, so i don't know what he/she meant. this is supposed to start u at single user mode. once u get in, u somehow go into run level 3.

mine was also working yesterday. all i had done was configure Meschb library, but i don't think that's supposed to affect anything.

so confused!!!!

do u know of any other way to force boot up to go only up to run level 3 w/out having to change inittab since I can't even get in?

Do i need to boot from the boot floppy that i made to get to the shell prompt? If so, what command line tool is used in rh8 to configure X?

I just typed my user id and pass real quick when it was flipping back and forth between trying to get a graphical login and text mode.

This is on my redhat machine by the way...

I think what you have to do is boot from your redhat cd and choose rescue mode. Then edit /etc/inittab and change the:

id:3:initdefault:

to

id:5:initdefault:

ok i am about to go try that but what program configures x on th CLI for RH8?

As root do:

XFree86 -configure

This will create a file called XF86Config.new in the root directory. To see if it works type:

XFree86 -xf86config /root/XF86Config.new

If everything works then move that file to /etc/X11 :

mv /root/XF86Config.new /etc/X11/XF86Config