INIT: Id "x" respawning too fast

[Junhao]

Hannibal S. Jackson wrote:
> --- On *Tue, 5/6/08, Junhao /<redhat at jmarki.net>/* wrote:
> 
>     From: Junhao <redhat at jmarki.net>
>     Subject: Re: INIT: Id "x" respawning too fast
>     To: redhat-sysadmin-list at redhat.com
>     Date: Tuesday, May 6, 2008, 5:04 PM
> 
>     Hannibal S. Jackson wrote:
>     > Rebooted HP ML370 (Red Hat WS3) and then it came back with the error
>     > INIT: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes.
>     I've searched
>     > and searched and have not been able to find a viable solution. I've
>     read
>     > RH's Knowledge base and they stated it was related to the graphic card
>     > settings. Problem is I can not log in to make those changes. I've
>     tried
>     > to boot into single user mode, run level 3, but nothing has worked thus
>     > far. It comes back to the login prompt but as soon as I try to log in it
>     > goes right back to the login screen never asking me for a password.
>     I've
>     > read it could also be an issue in the inittab file but I can't log on
>     to
>     > view that or make any changes. Any assistance is greatly appreciated.
>     > Getting that error but still can not log in at the console to make any
>     > adjustments because the password prompt never comes back. Also, I've
>     > noticed even when I try to tell it to boot the kernel into run level 3,
>     > it still goes back to 5.
>     > 
> 
>     1) password prompt:
>     Are you able login, then immediately go to init 1? Init 1 is single user
>     mode. If not you can try booting from a livecd. Then mount the harddisk
>     (assembling raid if needed), and edit /etc/inittab to boot to runlevel 3
>     (or 1).
> 
>     2) X spawning too fast is often due to an X misconfiguration, or missing
>     graphics card drivers. Check /var/log/Xorg.0.log. Checking X
>     configuration can be directly done using "startx", and
>     "Ctrl-Alt-Backspace" to kill X if needed.
> 
>     Hope that helps. =)
> 
>     Regards,
>     Junhao

> Not able to login in. Get the login prompt and type root. Comes right
> back to the login prompt. I'm wondering if it has to do with the changes
> I made the previous day trying to make the Red Hat machine an LDAP
> Client. I changed the nsswitch.conf to point to ldap then files for
> passwd and I'm wondering if that's why I can't log in via the console.
> Was able to boot livecd now and type linux rescue. Now just trying to
> backtrack and figure out what went wrong. I apologize I don't have much
> linux experience, just Solaris and although they are somewhat similar
> they are different in a lot of ways as well. I'd tried to comment out
> the respawn in the /etc/inittab and type exit and that still wouldn't
> let me in. Still wondering if there is something missing in the config
> files since I used authconfig to try and change it from NIS to LDAP.
> LDAP Server is Sun DS 6.2 on Solaris 10 and it stated making a Red Hat
> machine a client was fairly simple. Obviously something went wrong in
> the process. Thanks for your reply.

Same here for Solaris experience, tripping everywhere when I'm doing
Solaris...

The /etc/inittab change should be
<snip>
# Default runlevel. The runlevels used by RHS 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:3:initdefault:
#id:5:initdefault:
</snip>

This is taken from RHEL5.1, don't think there are much changes to this
file. Please correct me if I'm wrong though.

Anyway, I thought /etc/nsswitch.conf should be "passwd files ldap" and
"group files ldap", just in case ldap is not available?

The PAM configuration files is at /etc/pam.d/*. You may need to revert
kdm, passwd, other, login and maybe some others. Quite like a fragmented
/etc/pam.conf from Solaris 10. Don't think PAM is related to the X
respawning issue though.

Regards,
Junhao