Trouble with Runlevel

[Mitchell Patenaude]

> When booting, my machine stops and asks to 'Enter Runlevel:' which I presume
> will be 5 to run x.  However, when I enter that number, 'Init, no more
> processes...' is displayed and the machine hangs.  Presumably, this means a
> problem with my /etc/inittab file.

This is very bad.   Something is filling up your process table.  Either
than or you've got a corrupted system.  Is /proc mounting cleanly?  If 
/proc didn't get mounted that might cause this behavior.  Or it could
really be too many processes, though that seems unlikely.

> So I try numbers 3 and 2 at the 'Enter runlevel' prompt again after two more
> reboots.  Still get the same result.

Yeah, the problem is deeper.  You may have inadvertantly created a fork
bomb in one of your rc scripts.  (A fork bomb is a process which does
nothing but make copies of itself by repeatedly calling the fork() system 
call.  It may not be that, but it could be something similar with processes
being launched repeatedly until you run out of process table slots. (But see
/proc theory above as well).

> So when I try to edit in vi by the following steps:  1. vi /etc/inittab , 2.
> i , 3. d:5:initdefault , 4. esc , and then 5. qw!, it will only recognize
> q!, since the message with w! says 'Cannot open file...'
> 
> Great, now its a permission issue.  I try su at bash and get a new prompt,
> and go through the motions with vi again to edit.  However, it is the same
> result of cannot open /etc/inittab in order to save the updated file.  At
> this point, I am at a loss (and yes, still a newbie).

The problem is that when you boot single user, the root partition is
the only one mounted, and it's mounted read-only.  You need to remount
it in read-write mode.   Use the command:

   mount -n -o remount,rw /

> Any thoughts or comments as to a point in the right direction would help.
> And does anyone make house calls?  ( I would hate to reinstall, and don't
> have a real boot disk....only an install disk).  My distro:  RH 6.0
> (hedwig).

However, as others have pointed out, there's probably a deeper problem
if it's prompting you for a runlevel.  Has it always done this?

Good luck Gary,
 
    -- Mitch