Novell LINUX ENTERPRISE DESKTOP 10 SP2 - DEPLOYMENT GUIDE 08-05-2008 Deployment Manual page 830

46.3.2 No Login or Prompt Appears
This behavior typically occurs after a failed kernel upgrade and it is known as a kernel
panic because of the type of error on the system console that sometimes can be seen at
the final stage of the process. If, in fact, the machine has just been rebooted following
a software update, the immediate goal is to reboot it using the old, proven version of
the Linux kernel and associated files. This can be done in the GRUB boot loader screen
during the boot process as follows:
1 Reboot the computer using the reset button.
2 When the GRUB boot screen becomes visible, select Linux--Failsafe then press
3 After the boot process has completed, remove the newly installed kernel and, if
4 Reboot.
If this does not fix the problem because the Linux--Failsafe option does not boot the
computer properly, boot the computer using the installation media. After the machine
has booted, continue with
46.3.3 No Graphical Login
If the machine comes up, but does not boot into the graphical login manager, anticipate
problems either with the choice of the default runlevel or the configuration of the X
Window System. To check the runlevel configuration, log in as the root user and
check whether the machine is configured to boot into runlevel 5 (graphical desktop).
A quick way to check this is to examine the contents of /etc/inittab, as follows:
nld-machine:~ # grep "id:" /etc/inittab
id:5:initdefault:
nld-machine:~ #
814 Deployment Guide
Enter . The machine should boot using the prior version of the kernel and its as-
sociated files.
necessary, manually modify /boot/grub/menu.lst to indicate the older
kernel as the default option. For some detailed information about the syntax used
in this configuration file, refer to
Updating this file might not be necessary because automated update tools usually
modify it for you during the rollback process.
Step 3
Chapter 18, The Boot Loader
(page 814) and Step 4
(page 405).
(page 814).