after editing my /etc/inittab file so that i could boot directly into my window manager, my system has become unusable. more specifically, when the gnome graphical login window pops up and i enter my user and password nothing happens, it just pops up again. no errors are given that i can see and i know there is nothing wrong with my password or user name. are there any keys that i could press before the login occurs to bypass the GUI login from starting up? windows uses f8.

*changing to a different terminal doesn't work I've tried ctrl+alt+f1 - f12 and none open a usable terminal. by that i mean a black screen pops up with a blinking dash symbol.

what i'd like to do is to enable a working graphical logon, but would be very thankful if someone could tell me how to get to a working terminal where i could edit my /etc/inittab file. would a boot disk help in this situation?

my next step is to reinstall i guess
-pretty much a double post but no one is looking at the original post anymore

When you boot up, if you get a boot prompt, try entering
linux single. You should get a terminal to use.

explain boot prompt, does that mean the screen that show everything booting up?

before your system enters a runlevel is what he means.

boot: <---- That's your boot prompt.

It comes before the screen that shows all the things being initialized and detected. It might display LILO boot: or
boot:. Enter linux single at the prompt.

my system automatically starts up lilo's gui, i have no place to enter in information.

anyway, i've fixed my problem. i booted from an old backup kernel, this kernel couldn't boot the gui, x server crashed or something and i was thrust into the command prompt (is command prompt what they call it in linux?). from this point i edited my inittab file. is this a bug(not being able to boot directly to gui)? anyone know how i can boot to gui? ... anyone?

Login as root, try init 3, hmmm well for SuSE it is SAX2, then startx.

Hi
For bypassing lilo gui at boot time you usually hit esc or
ctrl x (redhat). Then you 'll see a bootprompt.
If you can startx into X it should work for your auto runlevel 5 as well and the inittab is the right place to alter that.
mine says;
id:5:initdefault:

x:5:respawn:/etc/X11/prefdm -nodaemon

maybe your gdm loginmanager is somewhat corrupted, try
another like kdm or xdm. Mine is gdm and is set in ;
/etc/sysconfig/desktop, the inittab looks in /etc/X11/prefdm
(mandrake defaults).
Does the odd thingy happen to you when choosing a specific
windowmanager, like kde or are gnome/WindowMaker etc
involved too?
good luck

Ok., I think I can nail this one, what /etc/pam.d/gdm looks like ?