Strange init 3 behavior,

[Robert Locke]

On Tue, 2005-08-30 at 06:38 -0500, akonstam at trinity.edu wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 29, 2005 at 06:15:54PM -0400, Bob Chiodini wrote:
> > On Mon, 2005-08-29 at 16:31 -0500, akonstam at trinity.edu wrote: 
> > >   Has any one seen this behavior on FC4 systems, and know what to do about
> > >  it?
> > > 
> > >  You go into a text terminal and wan to change to
> > >  init level 3, so you execute the command init 3. The machine hangs. (more about
> > >  this later)
> > >  
> > >  So just to try something you enter init 1 instead of init 3. The machine
> > >  goes to init level 1. Aha you say. I know what to do and you type init 3
> > >  The machine not to be bested by a mere user changes to init
> > >  level 5.
> > >  
> > >  A kind of work around>
> > > 
> > >  If you go into a terminal and you  type init 3 and it
> > >  hangs in various places depending on how long you wait and whether you hit
> > >  return. Now you hit ctrl-alt-f7 the screen goes black. You then hit
> > >  ctl-alt-f1 and eureka you are in init level 3. Is that obscure enough a
> > >  procedure for you. I tried this on three  machines and it worked
> > >  every time.
> > >  
> > >  What is happening here? Does any one know?
> > > 
> > > 
> > > -- 
> > 
> > Aaron,
> > 
> > Does hitting return in the virtual terminal return a prompt after you
> > enter runlevel 3?
> > 
> > I have seen what you describe on FC3.  I think the prompt after typing
> > init 3 is getting lost.  I just reproduced it on an x86_64 machine and I
> > see on an i386 machine as well.  Maybe a bug report is in order.
> > 
> > Bob...
> No prompt is returned.  The machine has hung.  However, I think what
> you are describing is the behavior on earlier versions. When you ran
> init 3 some lines appeared but after the line anacron appeared you had
> to hit return to get the prompt.
> 
> In out case , either the screen goes black and hangs or sometimes you
> get as far as the line anacron but hitting return does nothing.
> 
> -- 

Hey Aaron,

Two things come to mind on this....

1) Are we really, really sure it is "hung"?  Sometimes with the death of
X, it leaves me on tty7, and simply hitting Ctrl-Alt-F1 or Ctrl-Alt-F2
brings me to my text based login prompt.

2) I thought I remembered reading something about one or more of the X
video drivers causing problems going back and forth to text mode virtual
consoles.  Perhaps trying a "more generic" video driver in your X
configuration (system-config-display - Hardware Tab).

Of course, another test would be to try to connect to the machine
remotely after dropping it to runlevel 3 - you could try ssh'ing into it
to test whether it is truly hung or just a console thing...

HTH,

--Rob