Setting up X server on Centos6 minimal

Question

I'm trying to install Centos6, but as it turned out, DVD I downloaded was just couple Mb too large (CentOS-6.0-i386-bin-DVD.iso) for DVD to carry. So, to save time and don't download DVD again, I downloaded minimal (CentOS-6.0-x86_64-minimal.iso) and set up successfully.

At first, I did not get that anaconda stuff to show gui for install - only after 4th reinstall, it showed, so I thought install is OK, even thou, I did not get any possibility to customize installable packages. Ok, installed without delays. On first boot up, it did not show X server, just login prompt in a command line. Ok, I logged in, ran a yum update and yum groupinstall "X Window System" "GNOME Desktop Environment", as internets suggested. Tried startx and it just flicker and popped out some errors (EE) SIS(0): Illegal video RAM size (262144K) detected, using BIOS-provided info, so I understood from internets, that SIS chipset is malfunctioning - something is wrong with integrated gpu - I put PCIe one inside. Reboot, startx and nothing - it flickered, popped some messages and then Witing for X server to shutdown, ctrl+alt+F7 shows blinking caret, nothing more. Here is Xorg.0.log.

Can anyone suggest step-by-step tutorial, what needs to be done, to set up GUI on minimal Centos6 system AND make it default on startup, so after boot, X server login screen appears, not the one in commandline.

Solution

From my webhost's knowledgebase:

If CentOS has already been installed without a graphical interface, 
you can install this with the following commands:

$ yum groupinstall "X Window System" "Desktop" "Desktop Platform"

$ yum install gdm

If you would like this to be the default runlevel, you can edit 
/etc/inittab and set the default level to 5 instead of 3:

$ vi /etc/inittab

Change:
id:3:initdefault:

To:
id:5:initdefault:

Comments

[FilBot3]

This solved 4hrs of head ache. Thank you.