TechExperiment

Red Hat & Fedora versions all have different run levels. These run levels determine different operational and security states of the Linux/Unix system.

The use of the ‘init’ command under the root user will allow you to change the level. For example.

If the current level is at 3 and you want to be at 5 do the following:

su root
init 5

The following table explains all the run levels for Red Hat/Fedora Distributions.

Run Level	Description
0	Halt
1	Single user mode
2	Multiuser, without NFS
3	Full multiuser mode
4	unused
5	x11
6	reboot

GDM, the GUI startup interface for most linux distributions, needs to use the 5th run level to operate at startup. Some times the run level is at 3 for some linux distros and it needs to be changed to 5. To change the run level at startup, do the following:

Open the following file under the root account:

/etc/inittab

and there should be a line like

id:3:initdefault:

Change the 3 to a 5, and you should be fine.

(Note: if you do a text install of Fedora, it will automatically set the run level to 3. Once you follow the above instructions, GDM will start up automatically as it should.)