red hat user interface urgent

[Rick Stevens]

On Tue, 2006-09-12 at 08:01 -0700, Waldher, Travis R wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Rick Stevens [mailto:rstevens at vitalstream.com]
> > Sent: Monday, September 11, 2006 11:21 AM
> > To: Getting started with Red Hat Linux
> > Subject: Re: red hat user interface urgent
> > 
> > On Mon, 2006-09-11 at 10:05 -0700, som sahi wrote:
> > > Hi I am using red hat linux 4 upgarde 2.
> > > Please let me know whether it is command based only or it has user
> > > interface also.
> > > And if it has user interface how to use it or find it
> > > My support team saying no user interface.it is command based only.
> > 
> > Your support team had better do some reading.  What they said is
> > patently false.  Read on...
> > 
> 
> It is possible that his support team is either not installing the X
> interface on the machines, or if he has access to the server itself they
> aren't allowing X to start on the console.

Yes, I agree, but the way I interpreted what the OP said was that RHEL
doesn't have a GUI, and that's wrong.  Whether it's installed or not is
a different matter.  I may have misread or read more into the initial
statement than I should, but hey...

> We don't run "X" on our server consoles for reliability reasons.  We've
> had XWindows up and die on it's own in the past, in the process causing
> the machine to not boot.  (At least I couldn't find any admins to claim
> that they changed any X related files) The simple response was, after
> fixing the server, just bring up our servers in runtime level 3.
> Afterall, who needs a GUI on a server console?

95% of our stuff is that way also, Trav.  There are some applications
that run on servers that _do_ require X, unfortunately.  IIRC, Oracle
used to, and there are others (Hitachi SAN Manager, etc.).

> Just saying that what they said, while patently false for the operating
> system, may be accurate for how they configured their environment.

This is true.

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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-  What's small, yellow and very, VERY dangerous?  The root canary!  -
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