Fedora 9 & runlevel 3

[Bob Barrett]

Javier Perez wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 8:32 PM, Tom Horsley <tom.horsley at att.net 
> <mailto:tom.horsley at att.net>> wrote:
>
>     On Tue, 03 Jun 2008 20:44:19 -0400
>     Bob Barrett <bobbrrtt at earthlink.net
>     <mailto:bobbrrtt at earthlink.net>> wrote:
>
>     > I'd sure like to
>     > know what other process is running while /bin/login is waiting
>     for me to
>     > login.
>
>     Maybe you could replace telinit with a script that does a ps to a log
>     file, then execs the original telinit?
>
>     I certainly don't have the problem on my fedora 9 virtual machine
>     which
>     I switched to runlevel 3 after installing it.
>
>     --
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>
>
>
> Bob.
> I suggest you use the Bootchart utility. http://www.bootchart.org 
> <http://www.bootchart.org/>
> It shows the whole boot process after execution of "init" phase 
> collecting all sort of statistics.
> The important issue here is that it shows which programs run when 
> during the whole start up.
>  
> Maybe it can help you find up who is starting up GDM
>  
> My 2 cents
> -- 
> ------------------------------
> /\_/\
> |O O| pepebuho at pananet.com <mailto:pepebuho at pananet.com>
> ~~~~ Javier Perez
> ~~~~ While the night runs
> ~~~~ toward the day...
> m m Pepebuho watches
> from his high perch.
Javier,

Thanks for the suggestion. I downloaded it, but at the same time 
stumbled across
the forum mentioned below. That set me off on a new direction. I'll put 
it to
use later. It looks like it will be very useful.

For my personal use, I have used Linux since the first Slackware release to
appear on a CD. I have used Debian and FreeBSD. I used two or three 
releases of
Red Hat before Fedora became available. I have used Fedora for 99% of my
computing since. I never use MS products at home.

I have never before had this kind of problem. The kind where the 
developers go
off on some experimentation tangent, but supply so little information 
for the
users. I'm disappointed in Fedora 9.

I downloaded and burned the Fedora 9 DVD May 31, then installed it. The 
first
couple of boots showed messages on the screen starting with the one 
about the
interactive boot and ending with the udev message (only a few lines), 
then the
graphical boot started.

To restate the problem: I prefer to start in a console (tty) and I like 
all the
boot messages I can get. I removed "rhgb" and "quiet" from 
/boot/grub/grub.conf.
I changed /etc/inittab to read "id:3:initdefault:".

/etc/inittab after the change:

# 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:
id:3:initdefault:

None of the man pages indicated had anything that appeared directly to 
selecting
the default runlevel.

This appeared to work as intended. I got all the boot messages. They 
scrolled
down the screen to the loggin prompt. The prompt lasted only about 1/10 of a
second. The screen went blank, then the graphical boot started. It 
seemed to be
starting in runlevel 3, but then immediatly change to runlevel 5.

/etc/inittab leads off with "inittab is only used by upstart for the default
runlevel." Therefore, it appears that it is used to set the default 
runlevel.

However, according to this forum exchange, it's ignored by upstart. I 
stumbled
across this while googling for "Fedora 9 & runlevel 3":

  
http://fcp.surfsite.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?viewmode=flat&topic_id=54512&forum=11

What makes it even more misleading is that it almost works. The above
referenced forum exchange took place in April. My download was at the end of
May, and I have had a couple of updates. If fixed this, would it appear 
in an update?

I have added a "3" to the end of the kernel command line in grub.conf. 
Now it
works the way I want, but it seems there should be a better way of doing it.

Red Hat and Fedora have been leaders in advancing free software. I really
appreciate that, and I have never been critical of free software before, but
this has been very frustrating and time consuming. I know that Fedora is 
leading
edge and used for R&D for Red Hat, but Fedora 8 runs so well that many 
people
use it as their general computing environment. If a major change of 
operation is
planned, I think it should be a little better developed before release. This
wasn't ready to be released.

Bob