Hello!

My friend finally blew his computer up (mother board burned out in a Win98) and I've decided to let her borrow one of my Linux boxes for while until she gets a new computer. I've installed RedHat 9.0 and everything went fine. She needs the computer only to check e-mails and send pictures to her family, so it should fit her greatly for the mean time.

Here comes the problem. I've taken my box to her place and tried to use her monitor, which still works. By default, I set my computers to 1024x768 screen resolution and seems like her monitor cannot go that high. It turns out black and the power light goes on and off all the time...

I just don't know what to do. I need help with these things:

1 - The computer is set to login in graphical mode. How to I switch to text mode so I can fix the resolution there... and then back to graphical login.

2 - What do I do to change the resolution of the screen? Which files to I need to edit?

Thanks in advance. Hope I was clear enough...

Sure, it's actually probably a refresh rate problem more than a resolution (since 10x7 is pretty much standard), however you can try both, or other combo's. Either way, you will be editing /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 (OR /etc/X11/XF86Config depending on your version of X and what your distro uses). Locate the entry for Screens to change the resolution, the first one in the list will be the default, so if you want 8x6 to be the first one, change the order:
800x600, 1024x768, 1200x1600
Rather than:
1024x768, 800x600, 1200x1600

Now if that doesn't work, head over to the Monitor Section. In there you will see "refresh rate" values. Set these low, choose like 31.5-50 and 40-70 for horizontal/verticle refresh rates. These should be conservative enough to allow something to come up.

Ok, now how to stop graphical from coming up on each boot:
In /etc/inittab locate an entry similar to:
id:3:default
And change the 5 to a 3. If it's a 4, change that to a 3. You can tell which runlevel to change it to, usually there is some documentation within that file that desribes each runlevel, so read the entries and determine which one you need to NOT be graphical (usually 3). Save and exit.

You'll also need to able to get to a point to edit that file, for that use your install CD's. Plug one in, and go into rescue mode. From there, you should be able to manipulate files on your system.

Cool

...And to switch from graphic mode to text mode (if graphic is still crashing) you can use CTRL+ALT+F1 -> F6. CTRL+ALT+F7 is the graphic mode. You can also try (while in graphic mode) CTRL+ALT++ (from the right side of the keyboard) to switch between resolutions or CTRL+ALT+Backspace to switch to 640x480.

Good luck

Thanks a lot guys. Those were pretty usefull information Printing out this page and going to her place to fix it.

This forum really rocks

Be careful pushing montiors, even by accident, in X. I've killed monitors and video cards on accident.