I have set my screen size wrong, and now I can not log in using my GUI, I have to use bash shell.

I opened my xf86config file with Vi, using the bash shell, and tried to edit the settings for my screen, it failed, telling me that file is readonly.

I tried to change the permissions of the file using chmod 777, and it said "changing permissions" of readonly file.

I checked the permissions, and it said rw-r-r-r

I still can't edit the settings, and I "choke-choke" had to use win xp to send this call for help.

what am I doing wrong, I think I only need to edit the screen settings back to the default, as they were working before, and I was only trying to tweak them for my nvidia card. I downloaded the driver for my card and was trying to set it up, I set the frequencies wrong and the resolution, now I get only blank screen unless I boot to a prompt only.

help, help.

toshiba 2410 laptop, nvidia, gforce, redhat 9, winxp,

You shouldn't really chmod that file. Just 'su' to root and edit it then.

have you tried logging in as root to make changes
that seems to be the permission problem that you are having

I am root, the "#" prompt indicates this, right? I can change other files, but when I save my changes to this one, it comes up with a warning in red, indicating "unrecoverable error".

I can reinstall red hat to fix it but I would rather repair than be beat.

Well, the prompt is configurable but that's usually root, yeah. 'whoami' will tell you if you don't know. If it says -rw-[------] (the last stuff doesn't matter at this point) and is owned by root and you are root, I can't think what the problem would be. Unless the whole filesystem is mounted read-only. Does it do the same in any editor? And does 'mount' show 'rw' by the filesystem? I'm not sure what the issue is, then.

I found out why I could not edit the file, it was the init=/bin/sh that prevented the entire hda from mounting as write, it only mounts as read only unless it is logged in as linux 3 at the prompt only.

anyway, now all I need is the default settings for the nvidia card in "XF86Config"
mine are not right, if anyone has the horiz and vert settings as well as the pixel size, I think they are something like 300 wide by 240 high.

many thanks to those that tried.