Howdy...hoping someone can help...

I installed Red Hat 8.0 on my primary slave HD. I have XP Pro on Primary Master. I used auto partition during the installation of RH8. When the system came up the first time, it went into the desktop easily. I configured KDE to my liking, then rebooted into Windows XP to take care of a little chore over there.

THEN.........

I rebooted the machine...into Grub, check....select Red Hat, check....everything starts loading....looks good. I get to a command line login page, which quickly disappears...then reappears...then disappears...then reappears. An ascii dialog box comes up, but has garbled characters. I rebooted a few times to try the unreadable options. The best I got was being dumped back to the text login. I can login under any account, but I have NO idea how to get to KDE. I'd also love to know what's happening to cause this, and know if there's any way to prevent it.

CLUE: Not sure if this has anything to do with it, but the HD that contains Linux had an MBR problem at one time. It was later cleared up using the Maxtor Maxblast software. However, if there were an MBR problem, would that not prevent Linux from starting up at all?

Any help with this is GREATLY appreciated!

Ok, not sure if it'll help... but...

I've had something like this happen before. What happens is GDM (the graphical logon manager) can't start. When you get into the console after you get those messages to go away, what happens when you type "startx"?

Did you just install new drivers for your videocard in linux?

> Did you just install new drivers for your videocard in linux?

No.

I did just go over to try the startx you recommended. (Unfortunately, I'm back working in Windows now...) It called up many lines of unattractive info....the first bit dealt with not being able to load the mouse....

After that, I got a line to the effect of the system being unable to load core devices, then another line about how to report a server crash.

I've even tried reinstalling Red Hat, and I get the same behaviour.

Well, that's why you can't login. GDM won't work because X won't start. Try running "XConfigurator" (I think that's the command). That will setup how X is displayed.

> Try running "XConfigurator" (I think that's the command). That will setup how X is displayed.

Is that case sensitive? I tried typing xconfigurator (and a number of variations), and only got 'command not found'.

Oi. Much as I want to get away from Windows, at least I can get into it.

Life ain't easy for a Linux newbie, but at least it's a learning experience.

Check your logs. They are located in /var/log. You will like the logs. They are in english. MS Windows displays them as greek.

> Check your logs. They are located in /var/log.

I tried getting into that directory, and was told it does not exist. Oi. I'll try again.

Maybe a dumb question but are you doing this as root? To access a lot of things in /var (maybe all of it, even) I have to su. For some reason my locatedb file is in there and I was told it didn't exist when I tried to update it manually tonight, and had to su. Then it worked.

Yes, I am doing it as root. I found my way into var/log/, and I can see a file called boot.log, but I can't figure out how to view it. I did HELP, and saw the commands READ and TYPE. I tried both to no avail. TYPE even said boot.log didn't exist!

this is making me want to go back to Windows.... WOW. Did I really type that? Please forgive me...... I didn't mean that, really I didn't...

Try 'cat bootlog | less' or 'tail bootlog'?

I know the feeling - it can be frustrating. But I just think of how frustrating Windows can be and how much less I get in return and the feeling passes.

I dunno - wild shot but is it possible Windows reassigned IRQs with the plug'n'play or otherwise messed up your settings so that it isn't quite the same machine Linux thinks it is?

-edited for typo

OK, finally got a look inside boot.log. Thanks for the help, digiot.

Everything looks pretty normal, except for just a coulpe of entries:

"Failed to open a connection to a session manager, so window positions will not be saved: SESSION_MANAGER environment variable not defined."

and a line or two later:

"IP table: Bad rule"

Then:

"ntpd: failed"

oddly enough, followed by:

"ntpd shut down: failed"

Here's what's weird. These entries appear only once in the log, when I've been through more than a dozen of the failed startups.

I'm off to bed....I'll do battle with Linux again tomorrow.