[CentOS] How should I reinstall CentOS?

[Les Mikesell]

On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 2:40 PM, Michael Hennebry
<hennebry at web.cs.ndsu.nodak.edu> wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Oct 2013, Les Mikesell wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 12:28 PM, Michael Hennebry
>> <hennebry at web.cs.ndsu.nodak.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>> gdm hangs.
>> [...]
>>> user had insufficient privilege
>>
>> That likely means that the pid file for the process you are about to
>> start exists in /var/run/ but it is unreadable.  You should be running
>> as  root at that point, so that's odd, but maybe you have file system
>> corruption or some other cruft there.  I don't think should cause a
>> hang, though.    If you switch to a virtual console can you tell what
>> process is hung and see what strace says it is waiting for?
>
> I know what strace does, but where should I use it?

Either ssh in from somewhere else or log in on a virtual terminal
(e.g. alt+F2) so you still have access if the main console hangs when
you 'telinit 5'.  Use ps in the other session to see if you can find
the hung process and then 'strace -p pid' will show if it is waiting
for some system call to complete.

Does 'startx' work at the console from runlevel 3?

-- 
   Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com