After installation Login: flashes by.

[dwexplorer]

This is my first effort with Linux. I have a Windows 98 machine that I installed an extra 2GB Hard drive in. I Installed Red Hat 7.3, chose to dual boot using GRUB? I put Linux on the 2GB hard Drive. The computer is a homebuilt with an AMD K6 333Mhz, FIC 104+ Motherboard (VIA) and Diamond Viper Pro PCI 2MB video. The parts check out at Red Hat as compatible. I chose the custom install and got confused when it asked about video resolution and such.

When I boot to Linux I see the "login:" prompt flash by and the screen goes blank. The computer is busy doing something. I can't seem to do anything from there other than ctrl-alt-del and it will shutdown showing all the services beings stopped. I put the project aside for a while and have now acquired Red Hat 8.0. I tried to upgrade. The installation program failed. 8.0 installation gives me some indications. Anaconda starts, I see some lines of text. There's a message that it cannot open a window. I tried installing again in vga mode. This time I got what appeared to be a very large grainy graphic where I was seeing a very small portion of it. I couldn't scroll the graphic nor were the mouse or keyboard functional. I don't think ctrl-alt-del even worked.

Can someone give me a pointer or two? I was thinking of uninstalling 7.3 and then installing 8.0 but can't figure out how to uninstall.

Help

Thanks

dwexplorer

[fancypiper]

Apparently you chose the graphical login which won't work if you don't have x configured correctly.

See if you can reach a virtual terminal (use control-alternate-F<N>. F<N> indcates a function key F1 through F6). If you can, log in as root and commandpico -w /etc/inittabEdit this file so that the default run level is full multiuser mode.id:3:initdefault:. Now, on boot, you will get a console login and you can work in the command line if x messes up.

Reconfigure x by running startup until you get it set up correctly. I advise using the text login and starting the gui interface by commandingstartx.

Configuring x:
Linux Hardware Compatibility HOWTO (http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO/)
The Linux XFree86 HOWTO (http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/XFree86-HOWTO/)
Common x configuring tools:
Redhat - setup utility leads to several config tools
Debian - dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86
You may have these tools:
XF86Setup
XFree86 -configure
Xconfigurator
xf86cfg
xf86config
xconf

Redhat links:
Easy software management: Red Carpet (http://www.ximian.com/products/ximian_red_carpet/)
rpmfind (http://rpmfind.net/)
Red Hat Linux Manuals (http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/)
Maximum RPM (http://www.rpm.org/max-rpm/)

[ss_m]

Well you have installed the redhat system and by default it boots to the X-Windows system and as you have not configured your X-server setup you can't do any thing on your system. One of the ways is to switch to one of the virtual text consoles using ctrl+alt+f1 to ctrl+alt+f6. Then edit your inittab so that your system boots to normal multi-user mode. inittab is in /etc and find a line that has initdefault in it and change the init state to 2 or 3. Then you can configure the X-server correctly and then launch the X-windows system or do graphical logins.

Also I suggest that you reformat the entire disk and install redhat 8.0 cleanly on it using the text mode. That is, when the redhat 8.0 CD boots enter text on the boot prompt and it takes you through the whole installation using curses and terminal window, without using the vga or graphical mode. so you can install the complete system without any glitch. Also I reccomend that you turn off the graphical login and choose normal bootup and login at terminals and then configure the X-server and then launch the X-windows.

[dwexplorer]

"Also I suggest that you reformat the entire disk " Should I do that from Windows 98? If not then how would you suggest? What effect would that have on the dual boot partition on the primary boot up drive. Would it hose up dual boot? I'd hate to lose my Windows 98 and files on the primary dirve.

Thanks for the help.

DW

[miteycasey]

They mean format just the linux partition. You can do this during the installation right after making the partitions.
By doing this you are goign to do a 'clean install'.

No you will still have to set it to boot from the mbr.

Unless your ready for the leap. :)