Why manual startx?
 

I have RH7.2 installed and when ever I started it was loading the GUI mode GNOME but now it is just stopping at login prompt and after login I have to use startx to get load the gui.

Where I can change this behaviour?

I believe its in .xinitrc?

Well, I'm using Mandrake 9.1 and I had the same problem. But there definitely has to be some option in your control center or something like that that has the option of starting the graphical user interface.

Either that or there's some error that you're getting and you don't see it on the screen.

That's what I am saying that I have changed nothing so why this happened. I just added dbstart script in rc.local but even after removing it still same behaviour. When from the GUI I use Log out it again goes to text mode.

su - oracle -c $ORACLE_HOME/bin/dbstart

I don't know what to tell you. Sometimes computers have a mind of their own. :(

what is the location of .xinitrc?

if you're using red hat (maybe for other distros too, not sure though), just edit /etc/inittab as my guess is that something or someone probably changed the runlevel 5 line to runlevel 3.

basically look for a line like this:
id:X:initdefault:

where X is some number (my guess is it's probably 3).

change X to 5 and reboot if you want.

It is already 5 and I have not changed it. I am the only user who is working on this machine.

Are you getting a message of any sort indicating that your login manager is broken somehow?

The only thing I can think of that would cause this sort of behaviour is:

1. You have autologin with GNOME

2. You tried to update GNOME and the update did not complete properly

3. The incomplete update broke GDM (which GNOME often uses for its login manager, even going so far as to switch your login manager to GDM if it was something else), so that when you log out/in, GDM can't be found, therefore can't start, thus no GUI login.

What I would suggest if this is the case, is temporarily changing your login manager to XDM or KDM and seeing if that solves the problem. If so, you can then reinstall or fix GDM if you want, or continue with XDM or KDM.

Hope this helps.

I have upgraded my server to RH9 and now it is fine. You are right motub it seems problem as you mentioned.

Thanks to you all for your nice input.