Please help! I lost my GUI in Suse Linux 8.1 2

[noobtechie]

Hi guys,

First of all, I just wanna let you guys know that I'm a new linux user, so bear with the question. I had installed Linux 8.1 in a multiboot environment, windows 2000. Both os boot up fine, I have no trouble getting into windows 2000. For Linux, I was fine until I manually updated the system through the Yast configuration. Once it was updated, the two thigs that required for me to do was 1) execute /sbin/lilo which I think I did, I just went into the home directory and look for the path and clicked on the file /sbin/lilo. 2) Required for me to download the latest nvidia driver, which I didn't do. Once I rebooted all I was getting was the post looking like thing, which gave the done and failed status, right after that it doesn't prompt me to the GUI that I used to get, where it asks for the user name, password and the selection of modes. Now I only get is the command lines where it asks for the user name and password, once I enter them, the GUI doesn't appear but just the command line. How do I get the GUI back without having to rebuild it?

Thanks in advance!!

 

[RhythmAce]

After you login, type "startx". If that works, open /etc/inittab with your favorite text editor and look for a line that looks like this:

id:3:initdefault:

Change the 3 to a 5. This is what controls the runlevel linux boot into.

 

[noobtechie]

Thanks a lot!! RhythmAce!

 

[noobtechie]

Do you know what is the cause of that issue? Just curious. Thanks again!

 

[flugh]

At some point during upgrade or installation, something either changed inittab on it's own, or you said 'yes' to something like "Boot to commandline?" or something, not realizing what was going to happen. It may be a failsafe by the nvidia packager. It's not a bad idea to default to commandline when changing video driver. If the new driver fails, and you are booting to GUI, then you can get the box stuck in a loop (X starts, new driver pukes, X dies, init says 'ok, restart X...', endless loop) and have to reboot to get control of the box again.

I got tired of that a few years back, came up with a little change to /etc/inittab:

# Trap CTRL-ALT-DELETE
ca::ctrlaltdel:/sbin/telinit 1

So instead of rebooting, control+alt+delete just goes to single user mode. Saved me a lot of time in the 'configure,fail,reboot' cycle by removing the need to reboot

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JBR

 

[noobtechie]

Thanks flugh for the explanation!!

Is there anything else that I should be aware of when updating online? or any other compatibility problems that I might encounter?

 

[flugh]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it ;-)

If you want to do bleeding edge, learn your limits and step carefully. Is that taskbar applet that requires a newer version of Qt really worth potentially breaking your KDE-based desktop because you blew the upgrade (be it rpm, versions, whatever)? Better yet, can you recover from it if it breaks? ;-) If it requires a newer version of glibc or perl, forget it. Any given distribution was bug-tested with a set of packages. Try to stay within them unless you have time to spare beating things into shape.

Personally, I go through phases. I'll run safe for a few months, then get restless, install, upgrade, raise hell on the box (usually closely followed by a format and reinstall from scratch, after the smoke clears).

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JBR