broken linux

[Trio3b]

Uh oh! Newb may have just broken MDK 10.0 Linux. During install I configured with LILO to autoload KDE 3.2 desktop. Everything has been fine until.........Yesterday accidently shutoff power . Now during boot, something about loopback interface.....CUPS may not work properly. Then it only boots to '-bash' , which I believe is a shell. Then I need to log in under localhost.........then I need to log in as root.........then I need to enter 'KDE'..... only then do I get my desktop. Then when I want out, I can only log out of the session. There is no option to shutdown the PC from KDE. I have to reenter the shell...and then 'shutdown -h now' . This is obviously not going to work over the long haul. If I damaged these files.......who knows what else? This is my practice Linux PC. I don't have any important files. Need advice about this:

I can only devote a limited time to learn about checking the filesystem and fixing it.

OR ....I can reload the OS in about 30 min.

What would you do?

Thanks for any help

 

[moved from Installing Mandrake by spinynorman]

[Cannonfodder]

Try rebooting and from the prompt, type

 

init 5

 

If your graphical environment starts up you need to just tell Mandrake what runlevel you want to go up too. It may be putting you in init 1 - 3 (all non-graphical).

 

If it works, you need to make it permanent. Edit your /etc/inittab to change the runlevel.

 

Do a search on

 

runlevel /etc/inittab

 

to find similar examples. My linux system is down right now otherwise I would tell you how to edit the file.

[aRTee]

Go to the menu, configure your computer, and look around in the boot stuff - there should be some options there too that will allow you to boot to graphics mode without passing by the non-graphics part.

 

Just set it up to give you the graphical login - in that way, in case something is wrong with your account, you can login to another (it's always good to have a guest account or so) and try if things work there.

With the MandrakeControlCenter you can also create a new user.