how to stop X start-up (was Re: PLEASE HELP ME!!!)

["Alan Mead" <alan lpi org>]

A friend is (right now, this second) trying to get her Red Hat 7.1 laptop to
boot properly without the usual mouse and keyboard (she is mobile).  Her
machine is set to boot directly to KDE.

It started because she hasn't used it without an external mouse and
keyboard.  When she booted it, she got some unspecified error messages that
kept cycling...  I'd guess about the mouse.  She powered it off and then
called me.  I walked her through fsck'ing but when she tries to reboot, she
sees no LILO prompt (how does GRUB work?  I've never used it; I don't know
what is on her machine), it proceeds to Kudzu and then startup.  After
start-up it won't let her login and it repeatedly prints:

According to /var/run/gdm.pid gdm was running but seems to have been
murdered mysteriously

Alt-F2 brings up a new VC but she cannot login (it seems like the machine is
ignoring the keyboard).  Ctrl-Alt-Backspace and Ctrl-Alt-F12 don't stop the
cycling.  C-A-D shuts the machine down nicely.

I'm out of ammo...  I never use runlevel 5 (?) and don't use X much.  I
guess she needs to get to a prompt to fix things.  But I don't know how to
get her there and aside from deleting /var/run/gdm.pid, do I not feel
comfortable that I will know what stuff to fix.

Any advice would be appreciated!

-Alan Mead

----- Original Message -----
From: "Leonard den Ottolander" <leonardjo hetnet nl>
To: <redhat-list redhat com>
Sent: Saturday, October 06, 2001 10:09 AM
Subject: Re: PLEASE HELP ME!!!


> Hi Geoffrey,
>
> > the power off and restarted in linux. But it won't let me log in. I get
> > a message
> > (pieced together)
> > "file system check
> > unexpected inconsistency
> > Inode 4481
> > run fsk manually without ...
> > Log in to fix
> > press crtl+D..."
>
>  So press ctrl-D and enter your root password. Then run fsck on the
> filesystems that show inconsistencies. Acknowledge all questions fsck asks
you
> (keep holding enter). After you have checked all filesystems that contain
> errors you can reboot, and you will probably be able to login again. If
you
> screwed up X you might try booting with "linux init=3" to repair your X
window
> system.
>
> Bye,
>
> Leonard.