Switching boot mode Text/Graphical

Switching boot mode Text/Graphical

During installation, I mentioned that you should boot in text mode first because if you had any trouble getting to the desktop you could then troubleshoot. The main concern is your video configuration. I have seen many Linux installations not detecting the graphics properly. Therefore booting graphically with the wrong vertical/horizontal refresh rate synchronization may damage your video card or monitor.

Even though I just mentioned how to switch from graphical to text mode in this control center, what good is it if you are unable to get to the desktop? Luckily Linux offers an Interactive-booting mode. You can use this option to force the system to boot into the text mode by pressing “I” at boot time and answer NO to all the questions.

By answering No to all the questions, the system will drop you to the login prompt, (you should login as root here).

Mandrake itself offers a fail-safe booting mode, which will drop you to a menu. From the menu select text mode/full network, Login with your root password.

Once you logged in as root, edit /etc/inittab, this file holds the run level configuration boot modes. Find the first uncommented line:

id:5:initdefault:

Number 5 in this line means to boot into graphical mode (observe above this line you have a menu of booting modes 0-6)

To switch your booting mode to Text Full network multi user mode, replace 5 with 3. There after, when you need to log on to the desktop, just type startx at your command prompt to start the graphical interface.

To use the Mandrake control center under text mode, type mcc at your command prompt (use Display configuration), which will help you re-probe your graphics card. Have all the specs ready… good luck.

Creating a Pre-installation Disk

This option allows a system administrator to create an automated pre-configured installation. This is nice if you have many computers to set up, this saves you time by running an automated install.

• Replay: This reuses settings from your previous manual installation.
• Manual: Choose this for the installation to prompt you when manual settings will be enter during the automated installation.
• When you click Ok, you will be prompted to insert a floppy.
• After clicking OK again, the boot floppy disk will be created with the settings you used in your current machine. If the previous installation was done through CD_ROM, that setting will be used; if your installation was through LAN or FTP that is what will be used.

Note. Most of your previous manual installation may be used as replay, except configure X and partitions; these two you may have to take into consideration; but if you have exactly the same systems then this wouldn't matter.

When you are ready to install just insert the floppy disk you created into the new machine and the installation CD1. Turn the machine on and there you go.