Re: My recent purchase of Fedora 9

[Rojiru]

I recently bought a copy of fedora 9. I loaded it straight away. No Problems. But then I decided to re- load it onto a 20GB hard drive and use a second 30GB hard drive for storage.
Breaking the "if it aint broke, don't fix it." Rule.

Since then every time I try to load it I keep ending up in the root desk top. As for the partitioning etc. I'm totally confused.

I've noticed that if I try to re-install fedora, I get one set of questions, whereas if I format the hard drives before loading the programe, I get less questions, but I still end up in the root system. Any Advice. Thanking you all in anticipation.

[scottro]

Moved to installation

[sidebrnz]

I'm not sure what you're doing, so it's kind of hard to answer. However, it looks like you bought a Live CD and used it to install Fedora 9. If so, once it's installed and it asks to reboot, you need to remove the CD from the drive so that you boot from your new system instead of the CD. If that's not what you're doing, please give us some more details so that we can help.

[Rojiru]

Thanks for the reply. Firstly I should perhaps have said that it was a dvd I bought.
Yes, If i format the hard drive first, the loading of the DVD is more straight forward. It asks less questions about gateways and ipv4 etc. I follow the instructions to the end. (the disk is rejected) I reboot and then i am finally confronted with a login question. I think it was local host login ? followed by a root password which when entered takes me to the root files. Sorry to be so vague.

[glennzo]

Interesting. The first time you installed the install completed and upon reboot the system booted to a graphical desktop? Every time you re-install thereafter you are greeted with the command prompt only?

[marcrblevins]

Is your /etc/innitab file set to 3 instead of 5?

[Rojiru]

Yes. Thats correct.

[Rojiru]

Originally Posted by marcrblevins

Is your /etc/innitab file set to 3 instead of 5?

I don't understand your comments but i've come across those figures of changing 3 to 5.

Could you please enlighten me further. What it means, what i have to do etc. I'm trying to break away from Microsoft so the linux systems are some what alien at present. Not that I'm that brilliant with windows.
Thanks again.

[marcrblevins]

To use gui, you need it to be 5. The comments in that file is self explainable.

Thought when you reinstalled Fedora, it set to 3. Should be 5 on the last line of that specified file.

[Rojiru]

Originally Posted by glennzo

Interesting. The first time you installed the install completed and upon reboot the system booted to a graphical desktop? Every time you re-install thereafter you are greeted with the command prompt only?

yes, that's correct.

[Rojiru]

Originally Posted by marcrblevins

To use gui, you need it to be 5. The comments in that file is self explainable.

Thought when you reinstalled Fedora, it set to 3. Should be 5 on the last line of that specified file.

If I allow the program to enter root, can I change that 3 to 5? If so, How?

[marcrblevins]

So you are confirming you have a 3 in that file right now instead of a 5?

Login as root, use your fav editor.

Using vi:

vi /etc/inittab

Use Page Down and arrow keys to get to that offending '3' on the last line of the file. And type in this order:

r5:wq

Press Enter and then reboot your rig.

[marcrblevins]

Should look like this now:

# inittab is only used by upstart for the default runlevel.
#
# ADDING OTHER CONFIGURATION HERE WILL HAVE NO EFFECT ON YOUR SYSTEM.
#
# System initialization is started by /etc/event.d/rcS
#
# Individual runlevels are started by /etc/event.d/rc[0-6]
#
# Ctrl-Alt-Delete is handled by /etc/event.d/control-alt-delete
#
# Terminal gettys (tty[1-6]) are handled by /etc/event.d/tty[1-6] and
# /etc/event.d/serial
#
# For information on how to write upstart event handlers, or how
# upstart works, see init(8), initctl(8), and events(5).
#
# Default runlevel. The runlevels used are:
#   0 - halt (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
#   1 - Single user mode
#   2 - Multiuser, without NFS (The same as 3, if you do not have networking)
#   3 - Full multiuser mode
#   4 - unused
#   5 - X11
#   6 - reboot (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
#
id:5:initdefault:

[scottro]

The chances are that he's not familiar with using vi. (Though rojiru, if you do get interested in Linux, it's definitely worth learning at least the basics of it, since you will find it on just about any Unix or Unixlike system.)

You might find nano easier to use at the moment. You can also try doing typing

startx
after logging in and see if that starts a graphic interface. If so, you can use gedit.

Or, you can use sed from the command line. Be careful with this commands.
First

cp /etc/inittab /etc/inittab.bak

Now we have a backup copy in case something goes wrong.

sed 's/id:3:i/id:5:i/' /etc/inittab > init.txt
diff init.txt /etc/inittab

You should see
18c18
< id:5:initdefault:
---
> id:3:initdefault:

If you see that, then you are good to go.
cp init.txt /etc/inittab

Now your /etc/inittab should boot into runlevel 5.

This is assuming that you've confirmed your /etc/inittab reads id:3:default before editing it.

[Rojiru]

Originally Posted by scottro

The chances are that he's not familiar with using vi. (Though rojiru, if you do get interested in Linux, it's definitely worth learning at least the basics of it, since you will find it on just about any Unix or Unixlike system.)

You might find nano easier to use at the moment. You can also try doing typing

startx
after logging in and see if that starts a graphic interface. If so, you can use gedit.

Or, you can use sed from the command line. Be careful with this commands.
First

cp /etc/inittab /etc/inittab.bak

Now we have a backup copy in case something goes wrong.

sed 's/id:3:i/id:5:i/' /etc/inittab > init.txt
diff init.txt /etc/inittab

You should see
18c18
< id:5:initdefault:
---
> id:3:initdefault:

If you see that, then you are good to go.
cp init.txt /etc/inittab

Now your /etc/inittab should boot into runlevel 5.

This is assuming that you've confirmed your /etc/inittab reads id:3:default before editing it.

Morning Scottro, (UK Time) You're absolutely right, I haven't got a clue. If this was microsoft, I'd stick the disk in, answer a few simple questions that would probably be explained and I would be up and running. As did fedora when I first booted it. But since then its all been down Hill. Well not quite, I can load into root which I suppose is something.

But that said, I've had some experiences with windows XP which have made me think that microsoft policies are unethical, to put it mildly. So I'm ready to change and ready to learn, the trouble is every time I start to try, I'm faced with these dammed abreviations, for which there is no explanation as to what it means or even what it stands for. This is the same when loading the fedora disk. For example I wanted to put my Operating system on 20GB hard drive and use a 30GB hard drive for my files. But when entering the questions relating to partitioning I'm faced with abreviations such as LVM, which don't mean a thing.

I could do with a dummies guide to ...... at least explain the meanings and options.

I had bought a copy of Suse 10 and this does go through the set up with you and explains the actions to be taken. The only thing was I didn't like Suse.

I've also tried Ubuntu and Kubuntu but I could not get My Belkin USB network adapter to work on either. Of the 2, I prefered Kubuntu. But when I loaded Fedora the first time I was able to connect to the Internet.
Any way, guys I'll give it a go thanks for all of your help.