Problems After Installation

Trouble With the Graphical LILO Screen?

If for some reason you need to disable the graphical boot screen, you can do so, as root, by editing the /etc/lilo.conf file and then rerunning LILO.

To do this, comment out (or delete) the line which reads message=/boot/message in the lilo.conf file. To comment out a line, insert the ; character at the beginning of the line. Next, become the root user by typing su - and entering your root password when prompted. After you have become root, rerun LILO by typing /sbin/lilo -v. The next time you boot, you will see the text LILO: prompt, as used in previous Red Hat Linux releases.

You may re-enable the graphical boot screen by adding the above line back into the lilo.conf file and rerunning LILO.

Problems with Server Installations and X

If you performed a server installation and you are having trouble getting X to start, that is because the X Window System is not installed during a server-class installation.

If you want the X Window System, but you did a server-class installation, you can perform an upgrade to install X. During the upgrade, select the X Window System packages, and choose GNOME, KDE, or both.

Alternatively, you can install the XFree86 RPMs. For more information, refer to http://www.redhat.com/support/docs/howto/XFree86-upgrade/XFree86-upgrade.html.

Problems When You Try to Log In

If you did not create a user account during the installation you will need to log in as root and use the password you assigned to root.

If you cannot remember your root password, you will need to boot your system as linux single at the LILO boot: prompt. Then at the # prompt, you will need to type passwd root, which will allow you to enter in a new password for root. At this point you can type shutdown -r now and the system will reboot with your new password.

If you cannot remember your user account password, you must become root. To become root, type su - and enter your root password when prompted. Then, type passwd <username>. This allows you to enter a new password for the specified user account.

If you selected either the custom- or workstation-class installation and do not see the graphical login screen, check your hardware for compatibility issues. The Hardware Compatibility List can be found at http://hardware.redhat.com.

Does Netscape Navigator Crash on JavaScript Pages?

If Netscape Navigator continuously crashes on pages that contain JavaScripts, you may need to edit your ~/.mailcap file.

Edit the file using pico by typing pico ~/.mailcap at the prompt in a terminal window. (You may use any text editor.)

Remove the following lines from the file:

application/x-javascript;;\ x-mozilla-flags=save

You can also turn off JavaScript within Netscape Navigator itself. Click on Edit=>Preferences=>Advanced and make sure the Enable JavaScript checkbox is not selected.

If these do not help, you can also try to use a newer version of Netscape Navigator if available. Check the Red Hat Linux errata website under security advisories for more information.

Your Printer Will Not Work Under X

If you are not sure how to set up your printer or are having trouble getting it to work properly, try using the graphical printtool program. To access printtool, log in as root, open a terminal window, and type printtool.

Is Your RAM Not Being Recognized?

Sometimes, the kernel does not recognize all of your memory (RAM). You can check this with the following command:

cat /proc/meminfo

Find out if the displayed quantity is the same as the known amount of RAM in your system. If they are not equal, add the following line to the /etc/lilo.conf file:

append="mem=xxM"

Replace xx with the amount of RAM you have in megabytes. Remember that per-image append lines completely overwrite the global append line. It might be worth adding this to the per-image descriptions, as shown in this example:

append="hdd=ide-scsi mem=128M"

In /etc/lilo.conf, the above example would look similar to the following:

boot=/dev/sda map=/boot/map install=/boot/boot.b prompt timeout=50 image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.12-20 label=linux root=/dev/sda1 initrd=/boot/initrd-2.2.12-20.img read-only append="mem=128M"

Remember to run /sbin/lilo -v after changing /etc/lilo.conf.

Note that you can also produce the same effect by actually passing this option when you are specifying the label/image to use in LILO. For example if you had a label named linux, at the LILO boot: prompt you could type:

linux mem=xxM

Remeber to replace xx with your RAM amount.

Problems with Sound Configuration

If you do not have sound after your installation, you may need to run the sound configuration utility. As root, type sndconfig in a terminal window.

If the sndconfig application did not help, you may need to uncheck the mute buttons in the Audio Mixer. Click on Panel=>Programs=>Applications=>Audio Mixer to launch the application.