Red Hat nash problem

[James Wilkinson]

Tom "Nifty Hat" Mitchell was helping Jeremy Conlin.

Tom asked:
> Are you seeing the graphical boot screen or the old style
> text display with a the green OK messages.  In text mode
> it can be easier to see errors.

Jeremy replied:
> I see a graphical grub allowing me to up or down arrow to select which 
> kernel to boot (or I can push one of several different keys to add 
> additional options.)

You'll need one of those options. Press "e" to edit the line. Delete
"rhgb quiet" from the line that's got them (it should start "kernel..."
or "/boot/vmlinuz..."

The "quiet" gets rid of some of the boot-up messages: you want to see
them all. RHGB is the Red Hat Graphical Boot: without it, you get the
old-style text boot. This both has less to go wrong and is better for
troubleshooting.

Tom asked:
> Can you boot to any of these initstates?
> 
>    #   1 - Single user mode
>    #   2 - Multiuser, without NFS (The same as 3,
> if you do not have networking)
>    #   3 - Full multiuser mode
>    #   5 - X11

The easiest way to temporarily boot to a different init state is by
adding (a space and) the appropriate number to the end of the kernel
boot line you've just edited...

Tom recommended:
> In rescue mode can you comment out the fstab lines
> for your SCSI RAID files system and if so does the box boot.

Jeremy got frightened ;-)
> You are beginning to get way outside of my area of expertise.  I don't 
> even know what fstab is but I would love to know.  Keep in mind that I 
> cannot exclude the SCSI RAID device(s) because that is where my hard 
> drives are.

Don't worry: we'll guide you.

Can you use the command line to find your way around the Linux file tree?

In the /etc directory (where system-level configuration is kept), you'll
find a file called fstab. This lists all the filesystems known to the
system (a filesystem is what you put on a partition when you format it).

Use cat or less (or more, if you're used to it) to view it.

The comment symbol for fstab is the hash (#). If you put that at the
beginning of a line, Fedora will ignore it. This means that you can put
messages like
# Jeremy took this out to get the system to boot
in there, or put a hash at the beginning of an otherwise valid line to
disable it (yet make it easy to re-enable it).

If you have a preferred editor use that. If not, see if nano is
installed on your box. Practice on a safe file somewhere first!

You will need to use nano -w to stop it line-wrapping.

Ask if you have any more questions, and let us know how you get on.

Good luck!

James.

-- 
E-mail address: james | Og just boggle how stupid spammer is. How stupid
@westexe.demon.co.uk  | spamhaus is. How stupid spamhaven is. Og thought
                      | there was such thing as "evolution". How all these
                      | stupid people still alive? Og boggle. Boggle Og.
                      |     -- Caveman Og