On Mon, 22 Apr 2002, Matt wrote:

> At what point in the startup should I type Ctrl Alt F1? Once I get to the
> terminal, what would I type to start changing my configuration? I know
> nothing about commands. I am not an experienced UNIX user or anything of the
> such. I am a disgruntled Windows user who jumped ship because Linux looked
> good. I believe all that I really need, is how to get the monitor refresh
> rate down. Once I cut that back to what it should be, X should be usable,
> and from there I can handle it all.

Use Ctrl-Alt-F1 after the system as fully booted.
I missed the start of this thread, so I'm not sure which distro you're
using, but I'll try to help out.  Here's some background info:
Ctrl-Alt-F1 will give you a console that you can login to.  You can also
do Ctrl-Alt-F2 through F6 for more consoles.  Actually, once you've
switched to a console, you can just Alt-F1 through F6.  Alt-F7 will bring
you back to your X session.  At a console, if you can login as root and
run Xconfigurator (on RedHat), then it should step you through selecting
your video card and monitor.  Mandrake uses XFdrake, I believe.

Other side notes:

Ctrl-Alt-Del will reset your X session if it goes haywire on you.

On Linux, X runs in run level 5.  Run level 3 is console only.  The
default run level is specified in /etc/inittab.  If you didn't want to run
X anymore, you could boot up into run level 3 by modifying the
initdefault line in /etc/inittab.  Also, you can change to any other run
level on the command line by typing the init command (as root), for
example, to change to level 3, you would type:  init 3
You, can even boot to any run level at the lilo prompt by using:
linux 1    (this is for single user-mode)
linux 3
linux 5

init 0 will shutdown your box, and init 6 will reboot the box.
Next, in your /etc/rc.d directory are  several directories named rc3.d,
rc5.d, and others.  These directories contain the various startup scripts
that are executed when you enter a particular run level.  I could go on
more, but I'll leave you with that for now.  :-)
~M