Messed it up already

[Morgan Doocy]

Since you're unfamiliar with command line navigation, I'll walk you 
through some of the steps.

First, to switch to root, you CAN use:

nate@localhost$ su

...but it's better to use (note the minor difference):

nate@localhost$ su -

(That's "su[space][dash]".)

Adding the dash makes a big difference -- without it, you're logged in 
as root, but without all the behind-the-scenes setup that allows you to 
really do anything as root. With the dash, you become root as if you 
logged in that way from the start. You could say that without the dash, 
it kind of half-logs you in. Kinda weird, but that's the way it works.

 From there, you should be able to do everything root should be able to 
do. I would recommend first doing the following to save your patience 
while troubleshooting:

root@localhost$ pico /etc/inittab

Edit the very last line, which reads:

x:5:respawn:/etc/X11/prefdm -nodaemon

Change it to read:

x:5:once:/etc/X11/prefdm -nodaemon

Hit Control-O to save, Control-X to exit.

This prevents init from trying to relaunch X if it crashes, which cuts 
down drastically on the amount of time you have to wait before you can 
use the command prompt again. It also won't give you the "INIT: Id "x" 
respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes" error. If you'd like to 
reverse this when you get X running again, feel free to do so.

Now you'll probably want to run:

root@localhost$ Xconfigurator

This will set up X again for you. Choose the same settings that you 
chose before, when it worked. As soon as it exits, you can do the 
following:

root@localhost$ exit
nate@localhost$ /etc/X11/prefdm -nodaemon

This logs you out from root (dropping back to nate), and then runs the 
same command that gets X to start up when you boot the computer -- just 
for consistency, so you know it should work the same way when you boot 
up next.

If Xconfigurator doesn't work the first time, try re-running it and 
selecting some different options, then relaunching X. If you can't get 
it to work after a few tries, let us know what you've done and we'll 
see if we can help you out.

As far as sudo goes, I've actually never set that up before, so someone 
else should probably help you with that. I'm just too lazy to learn vi. 
;-)

Oh, and you won't need to boot into single-user mode. I'm not sure how 
to do that, but if you follow these steps you won't need to.

Hope that helps.

Morgan

On Friday, April 4, 2003, at 12:29  PM, Nate Birkholz wrote:

> I downloaded YDL 2.3 to give it a try and see if I want to buy 3.0. I
> installed on a Mac Powerbook G3 1999 400Mhz (Lombard) with an upgraded 
> hard
> drive and oodles of RAM. The system is currently configured to have two
> boots, OS 9 and Linux, with Linux the primary boot.
>
> Everything went well for the first day, then I messed up my video 
> settings
> by increasing the bit depth to 32, apparently a no-no with the Lombard 
> and
> Linux.
>
> What happens now is that it finishes the boot sequence, attempts to 
> display
> the graphical user login, and the screen flickers for a few minutes. 
> Then,
> eventually, it fail to the command prompt and displays the message,
>
>   INIT: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
>
> then sits at a prompt. I ca navigate around the system with unix 
> commands
> but cannot effect much change. I should note that my unix command-line
> experience is almost nil.
>
> I have researched this problem in the YDL mailing-list archives and 
> have
> found a few solutions.
>
> Unfortunately, the solutions all require me to be able to edit files 
> on my
> hard drive, and the files are all 'read only" for me when in this 
> situation.
> I need to be able to have root-user access to the files, but cannot 
> seem to
> get root-user access.
>
> If I use "sudo", the password is not accepted because I have not been 
> set up
> as a root user:
>
>   nate is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
>
> and the root password I specified at installation is useless at the 
> command
> line. Of course, I cannot add nate to the sudoers file of course 
> because it
> is write protected. I tried to use visudo, but typing visudo results 
> in the
> error message:
>
>   bash: visudo: command not found
>
> I see many messages about rebooting and starting in "single-user 
> mode", but
> I cannot find step-by-step instructions on how to actually do this with
> yaboot. The instructions I do find say to enter "[kernel number] 
> single" but
> don't say how to find the kernel number, nor how to get to the prompt 
> where
> I type this, since yaboot starts with a menu asking me for one of three
> choices.
>
> Reinstalling would be possible and even easy. However, I'd rather fix 
> it
> instead of starting over, since I learn more by fixing it.
>
> So can anyone please help me?
>
> -- 
> Nate Birkholz
> Minneapolis, Minnesota
>
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