I have Redhat 9 which was launching fine using runlevel 5 until few days ago. I believe my hda drive got too full, and now when I boot the computer, it run through the dmesg stuff, tries to launch X, and fails. It tries to relaunch and fails, and so on, with no end in sight.

Does it ever time out so that I can get a log in prompt and change the run level? I know what to edit, the problem is I can't get there from here.

I found the documentation on Redhat 9 for changing the runlevel using GRUB. I tried and it asks for a password to access the menu. I don't recall giving GRUB a password, and both my root and user passwords don't work. I tried giving it no password, and of course, that failed. Could there be a default password?

Lastly, is there a way to kill the cycle of launch and fail from the console?

## thanks

If you didn't set a grub password, then it shouldn't prompt you for one. Try booting with 'single' as a boot parameter. If that doesn't work, try using Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to 'crash' out of the X session and drop you to a login. Or try Ctrl+Alt+F1 to get yourself to the first text virtual terminal. Lastly, you can use the Red Hat 9 boot CD to boot into 'linux rescue' which will drop you to a shell from the CD where you can mount the partition containing /etc (probably /) to modify /etc/inittab.

Okay, I did a little more looking on the web and found my answer. I had to boot from my Redhat disk 1 and choose "linux rescue". It gave me a shell and I typed "chroot /mnt/sysimage". Then I typed "bash" and it gave me a shell I could work with. I called up "/etc/inittab" using vi and changed the runlevel to 3.

Next question: How can I empty the desktop trash from the console? I moved a lot of files there without emptying the trash and if I can delete them, it will free up plenty of space for my desktop to launch properly.

## thanks

Bentz --

Thanks for the help. I found my first answer just before you replied.

I did try to use Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to end the X session and Ctrl+Alt+F1 to get a text virtual terminal. For whatever reason, neither worked.

Got any suggestions about emptying trash from the console?

## thanks