RHEL 5 continuously reboots after installing on Dell Optiplex 755
 

I just recently tried to install RHEL 5 on a Dell Optiplex 755. After completing the installation procedure the system attempted to reboot to enter into the OS for the first time. However, during the bootup sequence the system will automatically reboot every time. There does not seem to be a consistent time or particular element of the boot process that causes the system to reboot, but it does it every time. I've tried installing 5.1, 5.2, and 5.2 beta and they all do the same thing. I've also messed with just about every possible setting in the BIOS and nothing seems to work.

Will your system boot from a CD?

Is your machine 32 bit or 64 bit? Do you have the correct kernel for your bit length?

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Steve Stites

Yes, the system can boot from a CD. Since the last post I have installed Ubuntu to see if that would work (to see if this was maybe just bad hardware) and Ubuntu installed correctly. This is a 32-bit system and I am installing the 32 bit version of Red Hat.

hey brother u have to access the inittab configuration ,perhaps the default init level is 6 there.U have to edit it to init 5.

I apologize in advance for asking this it it's a dumb question, but how do I do that?

Boot into a liveCD. Mount your RHEL / partition on a directory. Edit /etc/inittab on your RHEL / partition. If the inittab deffault level is set to 6 then change the line:

id:6:initdefault:

to

id:5:initdefault:

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Steve Stites

I just checked and the initdefault is set to 5. Any other ideas?

Ok, so a quick update. I tried setting the default runlevel to 3 and I am able to boot using that. Obviously I have stripped down functionality, but maybe this is a clue of something that is causing the problem?

You could try starting services which are in the rc5.d control and see what barfs.

STu

The only difference I see between rc3.d and rc5.d is

rc3.d has K99readahead_later
rc5.d has S96readahead_later

Doubt it the read ahead stuff, can you go into Single user from the grub prompt?

I'm not really sure. I haven't given it a shot. For now it seems as though I can do everything I need to in init level 3 with the command line so that's what I think I'm going to go with and hope that a future kernel update will fix this issue.

Runlevel 3 will allow you to do everything that runlevel 5 would - without the gui.