Your Pretty Linux GUI Fails and Dumps You to a Console. Now What?

Feb 03, 2009, 21:12 (3 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by A. Lizard)

"What can a Linux user do if you've been dumped to a black screen with a terminal prompt with a cursor blinking at you and you REALLY need access to troubleshooting information NOW? No GUI, no Firefox, no Opera. Hard drive indexing tools are generally GUI access, and just because the info is on your hard drive does not mean you necessarily know where in the filetree it is, and the locate command doesn't seem to work all the time.

"But if one still has network access all is not lost.

"The majority of Linux distros have a text-based web browser available, either installed by default or readily available via automated repository installation. You can use it to search for troubleshooting information.

"It's called lynx. While any long-time Linux user knows lynx, long-time Linux users are becoming an increasingly small fraction of the Linux userbase. That's the reason for this article."

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