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Re: xdm starting, but not configured



On Wed, Jun 04, 2003 at 12:10:58AM -0400, Emma Jane Hogbin wrote:
> > On Tue, Jun 03, 2003 at 04:04:47PM -0400, Emma Jane Hogbin wrote:
> >> Pigeon wrote:
> >> > Don't forget Ctrl-Alt-F[1..6] to get from your garbled X screen to a
> >> > console.
> >>
> >> Tried that, no dice. So i re-installed. I'm so impatient, eh?
> >
> > Ack, my apologies - I should have mentioned that there's a shell
> > option on the install disk from which you could have disabled your xdm
> > login. Go as if to install; on the screen with the scrollable menu
> > that the installation process walks you through, scroll down the menu
> > and somewhere near the bottom you'll find "Execute a Shell". So you
> > just go straight to that without doing any installing, and you can
> > then mount your HDs by hand and edit the init scripts or whatever.
> 
> Tried that too. But when I tried to mount / the files from /etc were
> missing so I couldn't reconfigure it to not start xdm. I guess it thought
> that the CD's files were etc? I'm not sure, but I did try that route.

Are you getting confused about mounting devices? / is already mounted
when you Execute the Shell, but it's a / specific to the install disk.
You can't mount your normal hard-drive / as / without causing some
major confusion (if at all... I've never tried it :-) ) The install
disk does provide you with mount points on which you can mount hard
drives - the standard /mnt, and /target.

If I take a guess, for the sake of providing an example, that your
original setup was partitioned as:

/dev/hda1 swap
/dev/hda2 /
/dev/hda3 /home

then you would do

mount /dev/hda2 /mnt
ls /mnt/etc (check: should show the normal contents of /etc on your HD)
chmod a-x /mnt/etc/init.d/xdm (knock out xdm)

> I'm now getting very close to being back. I've installed wireless, nvidia
> drivers and am just doing sound. The rest (hopefully) will be software
> stuff like cups. I've used my old config files to build the kernel and am
> hoping that parallel printing is still set up the way I think it ought to
> be. I'd say I've done VERY well though. The first time through it took me
> *months* to get as far as I've gotten in one day. I understand the way
> things work and I'm very good at taking notes. There were still a few
> things that I bashed at randomly until they worked, but I also think I
> understand why they worked in the end.
> 
> yay me! :)

Rock on! :-)

If you don't mind me saying so it seems from your posts that you know
a lot about most things and are good at experimenting and remembering
what you learn, but if your knowledge is viewed as a wooden footbridge
there are occasional planks missing through which your foot
unexpectedly plunges as you walk across... targeting answers to your
questions is an interesting exercise in cutting to shape a replacement
plank without accidentally making a plank in the shape of one of the
neighbouring planks which is not in fact missing. If you see what I
mean... :-)

-- 
Pigeon

Be kind to pigeons
Get my GPG key here: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x21C61F7F

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