Booting to a GUI with Slack

I am replying to a private message in a public forum, because the information is better of in here so other people might see it if they need it.

The message was:

Quote:

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I noticed your slackware sig ans was wornding if you use slack ware and if you do which you probaly do, do you think you could help me with a little problem i hae been having. i installed slackware 10 and i was having a problem with my gui it would no load it would go straight to a text based interface which is cool and all but i would like to use the gui when i try to get it to work i get an error message so i remaide my xorg.conf file and it stil happens so i switched to slack 8.1 and i still have the same problem do you know of any thing that could be causing this r maby its just i am using a dell.

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No, it's not because you're using a Dell. They're not that bad.

If you open up, as root, the file called /etc/inittab with the command vi /etc/inittab you will see somewhere a line like this:

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# Default runlevel. (Do not set to 0 or 6)
id:3:initdefault:

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Press the insert key twice. This will place the editor in edit/overwrite mode. Then navigate over to this line and replace the 3 with a 4. (Before I get any corrections, runlevel 4 is X windows on Slack and runlevel 5 on most other distros. Stupid I think.) Then press the ESC key to exit from edit mode back into command mode and press the : key, indicating to the editor that you are goinf to give it a command. Then enter "wq" (w/o the quotes) for (w)rite and (q)uit and your edited file will be saved.

When the system boots, the kernel will read this file and boot into runlevel 4, which is the fancy GUI, instead of runlevel 3, which is a text-only runlevel.

Hope that works.

<edit>
the command startx will start the gui as well as Relyt's method below, but you don't get a graphical login screen like you do when the default runlevel is graphical; but they could both be used to test the GUI.
</edit>

If you wanted to first test X to see if it’s good to go before you change the default to the GUI, then enter the command telinit 4. That should temporarily change runlevel to 4 - to return to runlevel 3, open up a console in X and run telinit 3

cheers

Thank you for your help i will try it and get back to you i bet it will work thow.

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Originally posted here by Striek
Before I get any corrections, runlevel 4 is X windows on Slack and runlevel 5 on most other distros. Stupid I think.

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Actually, it makes more sense to me, and maybe to you if you consider the fact that runlevel 0, 1, 2, 3, and 5 are used by most distributions, and 4 is unused. Where is the sense in that?

At any rate, on my Slack box init 5 is actually what I call "quickboot", basically desktop GUI mode WITHOUT all my development services started (Apache, MySQL, Tomcat, Snort, Postgres, etc.) which shaves about a full minute off my boot time. I also have a lilo profile for this as well.

Yes, it (the Slackware way" actually does make more sense. I'm only complaining about the lack of consistency with other distributions, in the same way Microsoft does everything different because they think they're the only ones who do it the right way. Not to the same degree, but it's the idea I don't like. I like standards.

That's a pretty amazing idea with your runlevel 5, though. I'll have to try that.

Snort is a development service:confused:

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Originally posted here by Striek
Snort is a development service:confused:

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It is when you use it to help saturate an alert DB so you can test BASE and are already running it elsewhere "in production" (or as much so as one can get on a home LAN). :)

Well now everything makes sense.

Any way you would be willing to send me that database? I just set up an IDS box at school for a project with snort / PHP / ACID / jpgraph / apache and all the fixin's, but don't have a way to really see what ACID can do yet. And I just replced by Smoothwall here with IpCop, and didn't bother saving the logs (never thought I'd care to look at them again. oops). I would appreciate it.

IIRC runlevels 3, 4 and 5 are listed as 'default' on my Gentoo box... which gives me the opportunity to run everything I need in 3 different runlevels [each with its own boot-entry in GRUB]. Really useful on a laptop when I'm running on battery sometimes and I don't really need vmware to get started [i.e.].

I was looking for things on speeding up boot time and it seems that making a shell-script with all the service starts in it [a la /etc/init.d/service start] and adding just that to the runlevel helps out, as things get started in parallel [rather than sequentially]. I do sense a shorter boot time, but I've never really timed it... there were some issues regarding having X start automatically with said script, but nothing complicated... I like having the command prompt so my laptop always boots to that.

Sample script:

Code:

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#!/sbin/runscript

        start() {
                ebegin "Starting AC runlevel"

                /etc/init.d/local start > /dev/null &
#              more stuff here
}

        stop() {
                ebegin "Stopping AC runlevel"

                /etc/init.d/local stop > /dev/null &
#              more stuff here
}

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Rather than changing the runlevel to init 5 wouldn't it be better diagnostic to go to init 3 and type startx? It's a PITA to have to troubleshoot when 5 is the runlevel than 3, IMO. Particularly when you run into graphic card issues, which based on the PM I get the impression the person is getting:

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but i would like to use the gui when i try to get it to work i get an error message so i remaide my xorg.conf file and it stil happens so i switched to slack 8.1 and i still have the same problem do you know of any thing that could be causing this r maby its just i am using a dell.

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Perhaps running the xf86config command would be a better option than just switching to runlevel 5. It sounds like the kernel is having difficulties with the video and it might have been better to know what the specific error is.

Wasn't xf86config changed in Slackware 10?

At any rate, Slackware and other distros, there isn't really a big deal with it using 4 versus 5. If you can remember the commands to use the machine something small like 4 instead of 5 shouldn't be a problem ;) And if all else fails, and it bugs you, just change the run level options.

I haven't had to use xf86config with my slack 10 (never has issues finding my laptop graphics card) but you are correct Gore. It's called Xorg and is more a Xwindows thing than slack specific. For those interested check out this page

XFree86 got discontinued so most distros are switching to Xorg, however there are no huge differences in setting up the system via xorg.conf and xorgconfig.

Actually, all you really need to do is X --configure, last I recalled.

Seems somebody is still having problems. The problem is:

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hi i would have posted this in the thread you did but i lost the link to it what i wanted to say was i did what you hade said and it did not work when it boots it says init level 4 now but when it is done booting the screen goes blank do you have any suggestions on what i should do. thank you for any help.

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It sounds like the X server (the graphical interface system) is starting but is not configured properly. If issuing the command startx from a text prompt gives the same symptoms, this is likely your problem.

Change the /etc/inittab file back to start in runlevel 3 so you can actually do something. Now run xorgcfg. You'll need to know things like the refresh rate of your monitor and how much video RAM you have and such. It'll also ask a bunch of questions about the mouse; if you're using a USB mouse, I don't know how to set that up. I assume you know which video card you're using too.

If you're not sure of some thing, just use trial and error; start with the lowest settings and work your way up.

To get out of a black screen like that, press CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE. This will not-so-gracefully terminate the X server and drop tou back into a text prompt. Then you can try a different configuration with xorgcfg. The GUI can be restarted again with startx.

You may also need do download and maybe compile video drivers for your card, but that shouldn't be too hard if the vendor gives enough instructions.

Once you find a working configuration, then go back and change inittab to start in runlevel 4 again.

Ok thanks for your help will do it now.

wow now it is starting to piss me off a bit. i put in my information
vertical refresh rate 50 ~ 160Hz
horizontal frequency 30~70kHz

and my video card ram is 128MB i still get an error message.

WHen it asks for the video card, tell it you're using a generig VESA-compatible card, that sometimes works for me.

ok will do and i just want to say thanks for all of the help.

O you would not believe this I found out what the problem was the values in the xorg.conf file wear not changing that’s why it would not work no matter what I put in for the values so I changed them manually and saved it now it works. I just have one more question when I installed slackware I had it install every thing and there is not much their just nmap and a couple of other things I thought slack ware came with stuff like ethereal and some others. It doesn’t matter but I was just wondering.

I don't think Ethereal is part of the general Slackware distribution. I always compile it from source anyway to add a few extras to it. It is available at www.ethereal.com.

(hmph... Squid is blocking the Ethereal homepage here. Who on Earth would call that an ad site?)

The menu system that Slackware builds into KDE isn't exactly top-notch, so you'll have to find a lot of the stuff on the HD yourself.

The complete list of Slackware packages can be found here.

<edit>
ethereal.com was blocked because it ended in real.com, which I do want blocked. D'oh!
</edit>

thank you.