New install of RedHat 9

avs925 · 08-31-2003, 11:55 AM

Good Morning,

I have a new system that I have a dual boot setup with XP Pro, and Redhat 9. This is a new, clean install for both O/S's

Hard Drive is 60 Gigs
30 Gigs for XP ( installed first )
30 Gigs for RedHat 9

Redhat was downloaded form the Redhat site "2" days ago, from the iso images.

PC is IBM PIII 750, with 512 Ram
ATI Radion Video car with 32 Meg Ram

Machine has had XP only on it for the last year, worked perfectly. System was formatted fresh for this dual boot install.

After install and setup of XP Pro, installed RedHat, install went perfect, the Graphical Mode was used, and it detected my video card, and ram, as well as my USB mouse no problem. Install completed successfully.

Rebooted the machine, the GRUB loaded came up, and I selected the RedHat boot, all systems ran fine with an "ok" appearing in green aout to the side. The hardware detector found my sound card, and correctly identified it. All remaining items loaded with and "ok" to the side, and the last message I see is

"First Time Boot . . . "

The screen goes blank, and the drive spins a couple more times, the monitor light then goes yellow ( ie - loss of video signal ) and that's as far as it goes. I have rebooted several times, same blank screen.

I know NT . Windows XP very well, but am new to RedHat, and I need some direct on this as I learn.

Thanks in advance, and sorry for all the details, but I felt they where important.

MasterC · 08-31-2003, 12:35 PM

Moving to the RedHat Forum

Welcome to LQ

Looks like X didn't get setup correctly, yet it was chosen as the way to start your system. You may have to go in through rescue and configure X...

Cool

avs925 · 08-31-2003, 03:39 PM

How do I want to alter the Configuration to prevent this from happeneing ?

MasterC · 08-31-2003, 03:51 PM

If you can get into Rescue mode, you'll want to edit your /etc/inittab file. There should be a line that looks something like:
id:5:default
And you'll wanna change the 5 to a 3.

Cool

Thetargos · 08-31-2003, 03:54 PM

My suggestions:

Boot the system, at the blank screen press ctrl+alt+F1, this should take you to a console (you may need to press enter to actually see the console). From there, you may want to edit a file called XF86Config with vi (I'll go into details to guide you trhough).

1.- log in as root (the only user you have actually created during install)
2.- Change the runlevel to 3 (so the graphical interfaces shuts itself up) with.

Code:

init 3

(you may need to press enter to get your prompt back) Chage to the directory /etc/X11:

Code:

# cd /etc/X11

3.- Open the file we are looking for with vi. Before telling you how to actually edit the file, you may want to see what are the settings in it, to that effect use the command less:

Code:

# less XF86Config

Scroll trhough the file with the arrow keys and up/down page keys, look for a line similar to this:

Code:

Section "Device"

And see what driver does it say the X system is using, I am sure you'll have radeon there. Now to open the file, exit less (press q), and invoque the vi editor (the one supplied with RH):

Code:

# vi XF86Config

Vi won't let you type in immediately, for that you have to press the key insert (or 'a', the word insert should appear in the lower left corner of your screen), navigate the file to find the instance Device again, and change the driver used (radeon) to vesa. Press ESC and then type :x (colon x) to save the file and exit the program. Now switch back to run level 5 (graphical mode):

Code:

# init 5

You should see the first boot Red Hat instructions.

Hope this helps.

avs925 · 08-31-2003, 04:48 PM

Thanks for the info, I'll try it this evening when I get home from work, and let you know how it comes out.

avs925 · 09-01-2003, 08:34 AM

Good Morning,

The Ctrl+ALT+F1 did not work. I still had a blank screen, even after pressing enter. I tried this several times to no avail.

I did get the system up in Rescue Mode by booting from CD 1. Once in rescue mode I tried to locate the inittab file within the /etc directory. Could not find it. Actually went into every directory on the system, wasn't there ( I'm sure I'm doing something wrong here )

I did a re-install from CD's. The Video Card is a Radeon 7200 with 32 Megs of ram, and was detected as such by the install, but this card is not listed on the REDHAT site under hardware compatability.

After a re-install, I get the same error on re-boot. Goes though all system checks, and then the message "First Boot . . " it goes to a blank screen, and that's it.

I guess I am truly puzzled at the fact that the Graphical install runs PERFECTLY, and it truly nice color, very crisp and clear, then it dies a nasty death on re-boot for the actual running of REDHAT.

The questions:

1 - Where does the elusive "inittab" file live, how do I get to it when using the resuce disk, and how do I edit it.

2 - Is there a new driver for the Radeon 7200 ?? ( I could not locate one )

3 - Once I get into the "inittab" file , and change the 5 to a 3, how do I fix the graphical display problem, so I can use xWindows.

Sorry for the further questions, just want to get the system up and running.

Thetargos · 09-01-2003, 02:12 PM

Don't worry, I know how frustrating can it be... Been there too. Ok, the other way around is to boot into rescue mode as you already did, if you pay attention to the prompts and questions the "installer" will locate your previous installarion of Red Hat, and it will mount it under /mnt/sysimage. the last message when you enter rescue mode is how to change your current root directory (/) from the RAM-disk (similar to that of windows 9x) to your actual root (/) filesystem, you do this by:

Code:

# chroot /mnt/sysimage

Once there you should be able to edit the file inittab with vi:

Code:

# vi inittab

Edit the line id:5:initdefault:, you know by first pressing instert, then a little insert message appears in the bottom left corner, you can edit now and simply to save press ESC and type :x, colon x.
Anyway, while you are still in rescue mode you may want to chech why your system is not running the X Window System, you do that by checking the contents of the file /var/log/XFree86.0.log, with

Code:

# less /var/log/XFree86.0.log

You'll see a lot of messages starting with (II), those are informational messages, pay special attention to those labled (WW) warnings and (EE) errors. Most likely you are getting an error reffering to the driver is not initializing, in that case the solution is easy: You need to edit the configuration file for the X Window System: XF86Config (think of it as if was an X.ini file). The file lives on /etc/X11/, you may open it first with less and locate the Section "Driver" you'll most probably will have the radeon driver selected under driver, just for trouble shooting, try changing that to the standard vesa driver.

You may now reboot (type 'exit' two times to reboot), and immediately after the [ OK ] boot messages you'll be presented with a screen like this:

Code:

Red Hat Linux release 9 (Shrike)
Kernel 2.4.20-8 on an i686

localhost login:

Login as root, and there just type X, a black screen should appear with an X shapped cursor that can move around (that is the MOST basic X interface, you have no windows and no desktop, just yet...

), if you indeed saw this black screen just press ctrl+alt+backspace to shut it off. Now you can type init 5 to start your GUI for the first time.

avs925 · 09-03-2003, 10:33 AM

This was just want I needed - worked like a champ.

Thanks for your help !

Thetargos · 09-03-2003, 03:42 PM

No problem, glad I could help.

John_Saunders · 09-04-2003, 10:12 AM

I am having the same problem as AVF did. I printed off what Thetargos posted and went through all the steps then when i got to the end, I noticed that I do not have an XF86Config file in my /etc/X11/ directory. Can somebody tell me how I can get one?

Here is the error that is coming up when I type startx:

(EE) Unable to locate/open config file
(EE) Error from xf86HandleConfigFile()

Fatal Server Error:
no screens found

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I've been trying to get this to work for a long time. I even went through and tried reinstalling a fresh copy of Linux 9 again.

Thetargos · 09-04-2003, 10:22 AM

1.- What video card do you have?
2.- You can run redhat-config-xfree86. That'll give you an XF86Config file. But still we would need to know what video card do you have.

John_Saunders · 09-04-2003, 10:37 AM

Thanks! It worked! I was able to boot up into xwindows. It detected that I had an NVIDEA TNT Rage2 (I think that's what it was) but my Gateway computer docs say I have an NVIDEA SMP AGP card. I'm not sure how many MBs of memory it has. Is there anyway I can find this out, if not what number do you think I should enter? It detected 32 MBs, but the computer is over 5 years old so I'm not sure if this is correct.

John_Saunders · 09-04-2003, 10:41 AM

Please disregard this reply.

nemesis28 · 11-25-2003, 02:31 AM

I was having the same problems here. I started to use this thread as a guide however I don't have a Section "Driver" in my XF86Config file. Any ideas on how I can go about this?