X11 vs text mode

[stan]

On Wed, 10 Nov 2010 21:37:23 +0000 (GMT)
Patrick Dupre <pd520 at york.ac.uk> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> How could explain this behavior and investigate it.
> On the same machine, I have 2 fedora 13 installations with the same
> kernel and the same package upgrade, but not the same installed
> packages. On one system, there is not problem to switch from the
> graphic to the text mode by using Ctl+Atl Fn, on the other one when I
> try to switch I never get the text mode right, ie. I do not get the
> login banner.
> The loading are exactly the same (ie. the grub command line).
> 
> This behavior does not depend on the user: ie. root or not.

Are there any messages in /var/log/messages when you try to switch to a
console on the system where that doesn't work?  Presumably you can open
an xterm in the gui to examine the file.  If necessary, you can su to
root in the terminal.

Do you see the messages from bootup scroll by when you are booting?  

Pull all the packages on both systems into files (rpm -qa > filename).
Then sort them and run a diff on them.  That should give you a list of
packages that are missing on the system that is failing, grouped
together if you sort it again.

My guess would be that something critical for creating and running a
console is missing, or you have permissions problems.