On May 2,  3:00pm, <lynn.newton@cox.net> wrote:

> The following problem may or may not be related to the
> fact that it is on a virtual machine under VMware. If
> you don't know VMware, forget I said it. It *should* make
> no difference. (But might.)
> 
> I installed RH7.2 on a virtual machine running on top
> of a "real" RH7.2 machine. (I need a plain, generic
> machine available to reference and take screen shots from.)
> 
> o The installation asks me if I want a graphical or
>   text login. I select graphical (as always).
> 
> o When I start the machine it comes up to a text login,
>   i.e., I have to login and run startx.
> 
> o *YES*, the default run level is 5, and the machine is
>   actually running at that.
> 
> o It happened twice. I reinstalled figuring I made a
>   mistake the first time. I made no mistake.

My guess is that the program that init is supposed to be
running to start the display manager is failing.  On my
RH 7.2 machine, the last line of /etc/inittab is as follows:

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

Have you tried running this by hand to see what happens?

If it fails, you might also try

    sh -x /etc/X11/prefdm -nodaemon

in order to display the commands being executed as the shell runs.

Kevin