"J Burford Fields" <jbfields3@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1128099319.512544.243110@g43g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com...
> Just tried to install White Box Linux in a VPC machine on an IBM
> Thinkpad. I took the defaults and it came up in X mode and obviously
> is not right for the video and screen--unusable.
>
>
> I can re-install, but it took a LONG time to install. Isn't there a
> way to switch to text-only mode at startup?

Yup. Add the boot option "3", and it will boot in runlevel 3, which does not
auto-start X. Then go lookup the documentation on inittab and your boot
loader, to see why this works.

When the X is already running, there are also a set of virtual consoles
available to you by hitting Ctrl-Alt-F1, Ctrl-Alt-F2,, etc. The X manager is
typically on Ctrl-Alt-F7.

> Next question: Although I use to be a UNIX admin (circa 1985), it's
> been years, and I just barely got Red Hat to find the wireless access
> to Internet on another machine, I'm at a loss for what video settings
> would work on this machine, and how to change them once install has
> been completed.

Couple of things. WhiteBox is being supplanted by CentOS, which has much
more active support for the version 4.x and its 2.6 kernel based
distribution. Check the websites for info about this.

Second, there's a very nice somewhat graphical set of configuration tools
under RedHat releases, called "redhat-config-*" or "system-config-*"
depending on the particular OS. The X configuration tool for RedHat
Enterprise and the Whitebox/CentOS releases derived from them is, I believe,
system-config-display. Run it in runlevel 3 to avoid having an X session
already active, and poke around for good settings for your video card and
monitor.

Also make sure you have all the published updates: X distributions keep
adding support for new video cards and monitors, and yours may have been
added since the released software was published, so the automatic update
functions of "yum" are your friend for configuring such things.

And by the way? Ignore everything Peter Breuer says, because he spends his
time snarking at newbies to prove his manhood, waves his hands with one at
45 RPM and the other at 78 RPM, and provides usable information only by the
greatest accident. There are others here who actually provide useful
information and hints: their usefulness is directly tied to their politeness
in dealing with the questioner.