Won't Boot after editing inittab

General Help
1

Hi,

Using the latest version of PIAF and Centos 6.5.

I have recently installed Gnome GUI.
Then gone on to change /etc/inittab to 3
To launch the GUI at startup.

However, the boot process stalls half way through.
Having pressed any key at startup there are no other kernels to select so I can
enter the CLI and reverse the change. It is only a long white horizontal progress line of Centos having loaded.

I am basically locked out from making the necessary changes.

Could anyone advise a work-around please?

Thanks!

2

I am sorry but we don’t know much about PBX in a flash. They have their own support community (beyond the FreePBX component of course).

We also have long advocated that a window manager on a PBX is a lot of overhead. Our distro does not include one.

Your question is really more about Gnome and the OS than the FreePBX software.

You certainly should be able to stop boot when grub comes up and load the kernel without the GUI.

3

Putting a window manager on your pbx is bad juju… editing certain files in /etc is without backing up is also bad juju… I would google “single user mode”

4

FYI VNC works without a local x manager.

5

Thanks for your input. Agreed. The motivation for a GUI was tightvnc to remotely manage. I have taken your valuable comments on board and will back up.
This was still in formative stages of setting up, so nothing lost.

I’m a newbie and learning along the way.
The single user mode won’t work as nothing happens when I press a key on boot up.

I’m going to try to boot from USB with a linux recovery image to revoke the offending setting.

Cheers!

6

You remotely manage with ssh. Ssh for the backend and tunnel http through ssh for the ui

7

Bear in mind that many who choose this software are still very bash bashful, my take is that a “desktop” although not strictly needed, is an invaluable convenience to such usrers and for the more seasoned still a convenience much like webmin, I suggest adding xrdp to the mix (then even the seriously windoze impeded can get there without angst ), then you have a simple way to get to local phones web servers with no mussing or fussing with your firewall outside of 3389 or whatever you chose to run the service on,

If you don’t run the desktop on startup (run level 3 not 5 in Redhat based systems , deleting the /etc/rc2.d/S*dm (whichever desktop manager you chose) in Debian based, then there is little or no impact on the system and only then while a connection is active.

(Add zoiper or ekiga or both on that desktop for simple diagnostics also.)

8

If you go this route I suggest you remove xscreensaver and network-manager , the first makes no sense to have and is probably the single biggest waste of resources on a desktop, the latter is also contraindicated for a server.

9

This makes me wonder if something like matchboxwm with chrome, gedit on different ttys

10

Well tty’s are usually hardware based, but in effect you could do that over the pts’s presented by xrpd or vnc , chromium won’t run as root unless you force it in /etc/chromium/default, if you know how to do that then ssh -[XY] your_program would be all you need to any of that.