graphical login at boot time

plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
Thu, 2 May 2002 15:00:30 -0400


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.

Two thoughts:

o Normally I select a custom install for real use. This
  time I selected a standard Workstation, and selected
  everything offered except games. Perhaps there is an
  RPM missing from a skinny installation? I tend to
  doubt this is the case, since the installation offers
  the choice of graphical or text login.

o VMware instructions about installing a RH7.2 guest
  machine say to skip lightly through the graphic
  configuration section, because after the system is
  running you install a special SVGA driver that makes
  the graphics and mouse run significantly faster in a
  virtual machine. *HOWEVER*:

  - I was able to run startx as both root and non-root
    *before* installing VMware's special driver, and
    GNOME starts just fine.

  - Even after installing the driver and rebooting,
    (which should not be necessary, but I did), I
    still get a text login.

Surely there is an easy way to fix this without
reinstalling the machine. The *obvious* answer would be
to change the run level to init 5, but as I said,
that's what it is already.

Yes, I've looked for an hour or more at everything I
know about. Clueless.

Normally I'd just shrug it off, but ironically one of
the primary reasons I went to the trouble of installing
this virtual machine was so I could get a screen shot
of the graphical login screen by running the
screenshooter applet from my "real" machine and
snagging a window shot of the virtual machine sitting
at the login. Grrr.

Thoughts appreciated.