change the timeout on boot
 

Talk about a newbie, I have about 8 hours under my belt with rh9. Never used linux before. My problem is I cant change the time I have to select a OS. Monitor does not come on fast enough. Just a small inconvienence. I hope this is the correct room to ask, if not direct me to it!!!!!!

hi there

if u r using grub as ur boot loader
then
edit ur /etc/grub.conf
and change this
timeout=10

to
timeout=30

to change the timeout from 10 secs to 30 secs
----------------
if u r using lilo then edit ur /etc/lilo.conf
and change the value of

timeout=50

after saving ur lilo.conf

run

lilo
in ur terminal
------------------

if u do not know which bootloder(grub or lilo) u r using then
if u don't get the file /etc/lilo.conf,this implies u using grub,so edit ur /etc/grub.conf file

and is always good to take a backup of files like these before editing them so that u do make any unwanted errors

regards

I have tried all those and thats the problem, I cant get it to except changes. Ill just keep reading the book I have and figure it out. Thanks anyway

hi

ok, if u r usng lilo then did u un lilo after changing the lilo.conf file

regards

To billb:
Probably a silly question, but where you root when you tried doing all that?

Im sure I am in root? asks for root password. Tried doing it in boot when you can select "e" or "c" before actually booting up. I use KDE as the "desktop". Maybe I will reload and see if I can make adjustments there. Could allways use the practice!! And I am blowing away as we speak my XP any how.....TEE-HAA. I am sure its something "stupid" I am missing.???? Side note, got to the folder for /boot/grub/grub.conf and was told didnt have rights??? But asks for root password.???
Thanks for the input

Note that the parameter for "timeout" is in tenths of a second - if you wanted to have a 8 second window to choose which OS to use, you would want "timeout=80".

To summarize what others have already suggested, as root, go to the /etc directory, then open lilo.conf with your favorite text editor. Make your changes, save them, then re-run the lilo program
That ought to do it -- J.W.

If it told you that you didn't have rights, that's good: you're logged in as user; not root (minimizes the amount of damage you can do). Asks for root password so that you can have rights.
I don't know which text editor you're using, so try this.
Open a terminal window (that little tv screen icon in the system tray) and issue the command: su (switch user).
You'll be prompted for root password; supply it and you're in the shell as root (with all the authority you need to thoroughly trash your system).
Then 'vim /boot/grub/grub.conf' to open grub.conf in the vi improved editor.
Use the arrow keys to navigate to the line you want to change. If there is anything you want deleted from that line, use the arrow keys to position the cursor at the leftmost character you want to delete, then press the 'x' letter key as many times as needed to delete all the text you want to remove.
To insert new text, press the ' i ' key to enter insert mode, and type in the changes.
Each line is treated as a seperate entity, so you'll have to do the same thing in each line.
To switch from insert mode to command mode (where the x key works), you must press the ESC key to exit insert mode.
To save your changes, press ESC, then enter :wq (that's colon wq) and press enter. Colon tells vim this is a command; w tells vim to write, q tells vim to quit.