Hey there all,
OK "I have Gnome installed and up until 20 mins. ago or so it was working just fine. I won't get into the details of how I screwed it up.
Right now I can boot into the console just fine but when I type startx I get and error of 'Fatal server error: A "Display" subsection is required in each "Screen" section'
When I do gdm, get the error 'gdm already running. Aborting!'
If I try to switch between screens with the ctrl/alt/F7 (?-I think thats it), the screen is just blank and I get no GUI.
<sniffle>
I just want my GUI back, can anyone help?

If you want to try gdm again, then run then get its process ID (pid)(the first number on the line) and then do a Clearly don't actually type the pid bit - use the number you got from the ps... Then run GDM again.

Don't know what is causing the problem with the display as this is normally set by the X server, although you could try running before running startx although this shouldn't be necessary!

HTH

Jamie...

Ok, wonderful suggestions, thank you but i have not gotten any father.
i tried the pid thing and all it does is bump me out and back to the logon.
got anything else?

i tried to do a linux rescue from the CD and it just froze while loading anaconda. should i just cut my losses and reinstall?

To be honest there's hardly ever a need to reinstall, its only really necessary if you have corrupt or erased files - if you tell us how you broke X then someone might have done the same in the past and have solved it.

cheers

Jamie...

ok, here we go.
me, -and my big dumbass- moved a users workstation -redhat 7.1- because he wanted to be able to dual boot w/ windows. when i got the machine into the lab area the monitors that we have back here are not quite as nice as the users so the monitor was clicking on and off -refresh rate too high-
i tried for awhile to change it then gave up, took the machine back to the users office, and tried again through Xconfigurator to change it.
it appeared to be working then but when i brought it back to the crappy monitors, smae thing.
so i ran Xconfigurator again and it didnt like any setting i put in. i brought the nice monitor back and figured that i would just work in it form there but it was doing the same thing now as the others.
now i have them not flicking anymore but i cannot get into gnome and not even close to getting windows on it.

whew...

did that all make sense?

oh, and i also ran partiton magic on it and created another partition -for windows- but that was way before all this other evil began.

Makes sense, in that I understand your explination of what you've done, but I don't understand why Xconfigurator would break it by changing the screen res... Unfortunately I'm not a Redhat user so I can't be much more use to you Hopefully there will be someone else on the list who can say "been there, done that" - if you're lucky they'll even have the T-shirt

Cheers!

Jamie...

Thanx for the optimisim

Until it explodes I'm always confident I can fix it... if it explodes then I never touced it

Jamie...

actually, i was having a problem very similar to this just yesterday when i was trying to optimize my refresh rates and whatnot on my monitor.

this is in the XF86Config file. in the "monitor" section, there's a bunch of modelines with resolutions, and other numbers representing the dotclock, the horizontal refresh, ect. i apparently adjusted the various settings beyond their limit, and the xserver just flickered and then dumped me to the command line. i had to kill the xdm, relogin as root, restore the XF86Config file, and 'voila, good as new, but unoptimized.

it sounds like you're having the same problem, messing with Xconfigurator, then X won't work, ect. you're going to need to find a backup of a modeline that worked, or you're going to need to calculate one on your own. it's not that bad tho, trust me. but you will need the monitor manual, or at least the specs. do a web search for "X modeline"... there's a few sites out there that can help further.