On Tuesday, September 20, 2011 09:23:03 PM Robert Nichols wrote: > That hasn't been my experience, and the RHEL 6 Installation Guide says: > > "The first time you start your Red Hat Enterprise Linux system in run > level 5 (the graphical run level), the FirstBoot tool appears, which > guides you through the Red Hat Enterprise Linux configuration." Use the Source, Luke (especially the chkconfig info for Default-Start): [root at www ~]# head -16 /etc/init.d/firstboot #!/bin/bash ### BEGIN INIT INFO # Provides: firstboot # Default-Start: 3 5 # Default-Stop: 0 1 2 4 6 # Required-Start: # Should-Start: $network # Short-Description: Starts the firstboot configuration program # Description: Firstboot runs the first time a machine is booted after # installation. It checks for the existance of an # /etc/sysconfig/firstboot file. If the file exists and # contains RUN_FIRSTBOOT=NO, firstboot will not run. Otherwise # firstboot will be run. If /etc/reconfigSys exists or if # "reconfig" is provided in the kernel boot arguments, # firstboot will run in reconfiguration mode. ### END INIT INFO [root at www ~]# cat /etc/issue Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.1 (Santiago) Kernel \r on an \m [root at www ~]# And it does indeed run on first boot in runlevel 3. Been there, done that, on RHEL6.1. If firstboot gets installed, it will run in either runlevel, regardless of what the documentation says (and I have read the documentation; the key criteria is whether firstboot is installed or not, and that doesn't happen after a text-mode installation). Read firstboot's dependencies to see what installing firstboot requires; yes, X is required, but runlevel 5 default startup is not (this was the default setup when I installed RHEL 6.1 server (through a VNC remote GUI); even though I wanted a remote desktop capability and thus X and other GUI things installed, there is no local GUI on the server console; the server install defaulted to runlevel 3 even with GNOME installed). Try it. While I didn't try a serial console, in theory this should allow a serial console installation and use of a server that happens to serve remote desktops.