Hardware problems with Red Hat 7.2 startup

[bribren]

Ive just tried installing RH 7.2 and for whatever reason it will not load a graphical interface. It will only go to the bash shell. Some other distros will load clean. This is on a p200 with a Trident 9750 Video card. Any ideas? Is this a prob I can fix fron the bash shell prompt? :confused:

[DMR]

During the install, did you specify that you wanted to boot directly in the GUI?
Try to start the X server manually by typing "startx" at the prompt and see what happens.
If you get errors, tell us what they are. You can use one of the X configuration tools to fix problem. Xconfigurator and XF86cfg are two such tools. You'll need to know the chipset that your vid card uses, the amount of memory it has, and the horizontal and vertical refresh rates of your monitor.

If it works, then you're probably just not set up to boot directly into x. You can check/fix this by doing the following:

vi /etc/inittab <-- opens the "inittab" config file in the vi text editor

Near the beginning of the file, find the line which reads "id:x:initdefault", where x is a number, most likely 3 or 5. If the number is 5, then you should be booting to the GUI, and something else is wrong. If the number is 3, then you're set up to boot to the command line.
To fix it:

-enter insert mode by hitting the "ins" key (duh...)
-navigate the cursor over the colon following the 3 and hit delete/backspace
-replace the 3 with 5
-hit the esc key
-type :wq (don't forget the colon)
-reboot. You should now boot right into X.

[ 09 March 2002: Message edited by: DMR ]