[Sussex]login/logout/reboot/shutdown question (Gentoo)?

[Stephen Williams]

On Mon, 2004-11-15 at 00:43, John wrote:
> On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 00:26:17 +0000, Thomas Adam  
> <thomas at edulinux.homeunix.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, Nov 15, 2004 at 12:23:19AM +0000, John D. wrote:
> >
> >> Also to reply to Thomas, no, what I mean is that it does get as far as
> >> a text init3 type login but it seems to do like a startx type thing,
> >> but not until I've started typing either root or john (original user
> >> account eh what!). I don't actually have to get as far as putting in
> >> the full user name and password.
> >
> > Aaah, then the only thing I can say here is that patience is a definite
> > virtue. :)
> >
> >> Yes I probably have got my runlevels arse about face, because the
> >> line in the /etc/inittab says id:5:initdefault: so I'm presuming
> >> that that's wrong ? I'll change it to id:2:initdefault: and see what
> >> happens.
> >
> > No, don't do that. I'm not sure how gentoo organises things, but Debian
> > does not distinguish any difference between runlevels 2->5 inclusive.
> > Changing gentoo's default runlevel 2 might not do what you expected it
> > to. :)
> >
> 
> Ha, you're right there Thomas, all it succeeded in doing was change the  
> default runlevel that showed up in the boot dialogue as 2 and then I did  
> have to log in and tell it to startx.
> 
> Most annoying is that now the damn e-mail seems to be playing up,  
> Evolution wouldn't connect to either of my normal e-mail accounts, neither  
> would Kmail, got a "server couldn't connect" reply when I tried to ping my  
> ISP, so I rebooted my router and still got nothing. So i'm sending this  
> with opera mail from my windows install!
> 

I find that if I can't connect to the internet it's often the default
route gateway not being set. Have a look at the output of route. If it
doesn't show a default route with your router as gateway this may be
your problem.

Try:

route add default gw {your router lan IP address}

and then re-try your mail. If this works you can amend /etc/conf.d/net
to set up the default gateway at boot time.

Also, check your /etc/resolv.conf. Unless you are running dns on your
network with the dns set to forward requests, you might find it useful
to add your router IP to ensure that your host routes unresolved name
requests to your router, and thence to the internet.

Hope this helps.

Steve Williams.


Steve Willams.


> Oh, and now confused as hell!
> 
> regards
> 
> John D.
> 
>