Believe me! when i say i did, i did...now if i can remember, what i did? Oh yeah search for my problem in this forums and many others before finally becoming a member to this great forums.

Since i didn't find a solution anywhere for my problem, i decided to give you guys a shot!

Here it goes...

Red Hat 7.2 got it from a book called Operating Systems for a first term class... even though is on the book we don't cover UNIX until the 4th term!

Using GRUB and the only way it has loaded for me is installing it on the MBR, if i install it on the beginning of the Linux Partition it would not load. If i choose from the BIOS to look for this HD first (i'm trying to setup a 2 O/S, 2 HD's system with XP being the other O/S) GRUB would freeze just showing on the prompt the text GRUB.

My problem now is that after the whole boot-up process i'm ask for a login name and password.... i did specify on installation a password for Root (i think that was it). But i didn't create a user account... therefor i can't type anything in there to move on with the process.

If you are still reading... then you are the one helping me... so here we go.

I found out about the command useradd or adduser i tried it and created an account but don't quite understand how to specify passwords....and i don't know if this is really how i have to create an user account to login ( a system account i think). BTW I'm using the CD1 to boot to prompt.

I just want to create an account so i can finally see linux's GUI and setup all the other stuff inside. I know its a long post, but i just wanted to give you lots of info...if you need any other details, just ask!!!! Thanks for the replies!!!!!

use the passwd command as follows:
passwd NewAccount

It will prompt for your password twice and then the new account will be available.

This must be accomplished while logged in as root.

P.S. your gui should work fine logged into the root account durectly.

I tried that and it seems to be working. Going upstairs to reboot and try to login. While i'm at this...what's the command for a clean reboot... you know, the system turning off everything...i do reboot and it just do that...it doesn "unmount" the system...

well let me go and check if i can login!

BigJPR proud to be a

-edit-

I'm i supposed to enter a command to load linux's GUI?

Ohhh and that solved my user login problems thanks DeanMorse !

Ohhh now that i at least have it working on Text (command prompt), how can i get windows XP to load or show up in GRUB... i only show Linux...is there a guide or something you can point me too.

Thanks !

Me again!

What command (s) i use to manualy? start the linux gui?

Thks for replying

There's a 'shutdown -r' or some such, but I do 'init 6' when I don't give it the three finger salute.

For gui, 'startx'.

For grub, I don't know, sorry. I always use LILO. In LILO, it's editing lilo.conf to include the other OS and running 'lilo' after it. For grub, it's possibly something similar, but ymmv. Good luck.

Either "startx" or boot into runlevel 5 - from command line:
init 5

or change the runlevel number in the "initdefault" line in /etc/inittab to 5 (it is probably at 3 just now).

There are plenty of threads about adding XP to grub but if run into any trouble post which drive/partition XP is loaded on and I'll post a section to add to your "/boot/grub/grub.conf" file.

when i try startx, it pauses (like trying to do something ) then it clears the screen and shows me what it looks like video cards ....my brand of video cards (ATI 8500) but this is not interactive.... is just showing me all the options i have (for ATI) when installing linux.

then it says somekind of error and drops me to localhost user / prompt. im a try the init 5 to see if that works.

Could this be a problem with my vid card?

thanks for replying!

It sounds like it - is it a very new card? RH 7.2 is a fairly old distro now and may not include drivers for it.

Or it could just be misconfigured. Not sure what that distro uses, but there should be something like xf86config - some kind of configuration/setup tool. Depends on the error, but that scroll-and-die sometimes happens when I go for a resolution/bit-depth/etc. that the system won't let me have. Just try to rerun the setup and aim conservatively. Then if it runs at all, you know that much and can try to tweak it to get it better.

digiot, ithink that's my problem...on linux install i choose around the same settings as winXP.

Now how do i configure that xf86conf file?just open it? how?

you got to love newbies!