Newbe - Linux Boot Problem

[rrrssssss]

Hello forum,

I am very new at Linux. I installed Linux Mandrake 9.2 for the first time the other day and it work very well in every way. But as I was exploring all that it had to offer, I somehow made it start asking for my user name and password during the boot process, and after I put in my user name and password, it came to this line: [roy@localhost roy]?

No mater what I type in, it says it is an invalid command. If I type in "reboot", it will reboot until it gets to that same point again.

Please answer three questions for me. 1) What mode of operation is it in? and 2) what should I type in to get it to finish booting (assuming it will)? 3) How do I get it to boot up normally again? Just for the record, my user name is roy.

Your help would be most appreciated.

Thanks.

Roy S. Smith

 

[Praetor]

Define booting normally. Are you trying to get into the GUI environment? Just try typing in startx at the command prompt to get back into X and KDE. You probably just disabled KDM, the login manager for X/KDE.

 

[drag]

Please answer three questions for me. 1) What mode of operation is it in? and

Probably just good old fasion command line, normally you just boot into what is called a "graphical login screen". This is just command line login, the "natural" state of linux. It's also known as a virtual terminal, because it's made to emulate what you saw when you logged into a unix terminal. You have 6 terminals, and normally you can switch between them with the "ctl+alt+Fn" button combo, were Fn=F1-F6. You can switch to these at anytime, and normally once it's started X will be accessable with ctl+alt+F7.


Maybe your stuck in single user mode, sometimes this happens when you don't shutdown properly, but I don't think so because it would tell you about it and it would only ask for your root password.

Try "startx" and see what happens. That should start it up. If it doesn't then it could be a problem with your X configuration. The text config file is located in /etc/X11/XF86Config (newer style is generally XF86Config-4). You also probably have a log file located in /var/log/ directory and it's usually something like XFree86.log or something like that. Using those you can usually figure out the problem pretty quickly.

2) what should I type in to get it to finish booting (assuming it will)?

Try "startx" and see what happens. That should start it up. If it doesn't then it could be a problem with your X configuration. The text config file is located in /etc/X11/XF86Config (newer style is generally XF86Config-4). You also probably have a log file located in /var/log/ directory and it's usually something like XFree86.log or something like that. Using those you can usually figure out the problem pretty quickly.

3) How do I get it to boot up normally again? Just for the record, my user name is roy.

Well it's probably already booted up, X just runs ontop of what your seeing their.

It's much like dos, but what your logging into is called "bash shell". It's like Dos on steriods and much more advanced, designed for mutliuser enviroments. Many Linux people just use the Bash shell exclusively. If they use X, it's often just so they can have many xterminals open.

If the "startx" didn't start X, then that's probably why your log in screen isn't their. Get startx to work and then the login screen should be back next boot up.

THere are 3 common log in programs: kdm, xdm, and gdm.

I don't know what mandrake uses, though. but they are generally the same. xdm is the generic XFree86 version. Kdm for kde desktop enviroment, gdm for gnome. But they are all interchangable. If you use gdm (or not just replace the name with the other 2 to see if those work) and startx works, log out of X and try:

/etc/init.d/gdm restart
or
/etc/init.d/kdm restart
or
/etc/init.d/xdm restart

Then if that works, it's a problem with your runlevel configuration. Runlevels dictate which programs run at what time in the boot up proccess.

But that's getting more complicated.

 

[rrrssssss]

Thanks to both of you for your input. I finally did get it to boot "normally", in the GUI inviroment. But not by typing startx at that command prompt. Whenever I typed startx at the command prompt, I got an error message saying "fatal server error - no screens found" so I assumed my graphics card was not configured right anymore since I had been messing with it's configuration before all of this trouble began. So I did an "upgrade" install, using the same disks that I originally used the first time around (it really wasn't an upgrade, but it would at least take me to that configuration panel at the last step, called the summary, which is where I reconfigured my graphics card. Then it booted up "normally", in the GUI mode, completely bypassing that command line prompt.

By the way, thank you Drag for the in depth explanation that you gave. I can understand your explanation better than what's in the manual. I'll probably print it out and study it more.

Thanks again,

Roy S. Smith

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: rrrssssss
So I did an "upgrade" install, using the same disks that I originally used the first time around (it really wasn't an upgrade, but it would at least take me to that configuration panel at the last step, called the summary, which is where I reconfigured my graphics card.

For future reference, all (well, almost all) of Mandrake's tools start with "drak". That means if you need to reconfigure something and you're "stuck" in text mode, you can type "drak" and then hit Tab. That will show you all the configuration tools installed on the system. Finish the command appropriately and hit Enter. For example, the X configuration tool you needed is probably something like "drakxf86config".