[SGVLUG] FC4 -- how to stop boot into graphics mode

[Don Saxton]

I got some experience finding a text terminal and I can report some sad 
news.  But first the good news! After several tries I got a modeline 
that works on my 2405fpw monitor and MSI version of the nvidia 6600.  I 
have the impression that there must be a range of modeline parameters 
that will work. I don't think my solution is optimal, but in the range 
of ok.  I  am guessing that the xvidtune might help to spruce it up.  
One of my requirements is to use this great 1920x1200 to view hdtv at 
1920x1080 and 1280x720, So I think I need three modelines. I have 
mplayer playing the atsc stream from /dev/dvb/apapter0/dvr0 which has 
been tuned by azap, so I am someplace on the map. Concommitant problems: 
lircd won't start (serial ir device and serial driver loads), don't know 
if the 6600 is accelerating mpeg2 (could that be addressed in the dvb 
drivers?),  and my alsa config is for sure not right (sound stream 
frequently crashs mplayer on a 2.8ghz machine). my goal is to solve 
enough problems to get mythtv to crank up. Having fun, just my progress 
has so far been a bit soggy.

The bad news is that it seems that if the video is stuck with a bad 
modeline, then you can't see a test terminal. Fortunately I upgraded fc4 
so that I have another kernel which seems to ignore the bad video 
config. Also you can get grub to jump to runlevel 1. sort of the 'catch 
me if you can' solution.

Michael Proctor-Smith wrote:

>On 1/24/06, Dustin <laurence at alice.caltech.edu> wrote:
>  
>
>>On Mon, 23 Jan 2006, Emerson, Tom wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>option.  For that, I'd suggest starting in "mode 3" -- this is the full
>>>every-day/networking mode, but specifically WITHOUT X (at least, by
>>>default for most distros)
>>>      
>>>
>>But specifically not in Debian, which insists on configuring all the
>>runlevels identically by default, and of course nothing about normal
>>runlevels applies to Gentoo.
>>
>>    
>>
>>>  $ sync
>>>  $ telinit 5
>>>
>>>(some consider the "sync" to be optional -- it's purpose is to ensure
>>>that any pending "writes" to disk drives have completed before
>>>potentially losing the disk buffers.)
>>>      
>>>
>>Are you suggesting that Linux can corrupt disks because of a runlevel
>>change?!?
>>    
>>
>
>I think Tom just likes to call sync as init is a userspace process and
>has nothing to do with kernel disk buffers, even if changing runlevel
>was to unmount file systems the kernel would not unmount a filesystem
>without syncing it.
>
>  
>