I knew about and used ifup (the device is wlan0). It did not solve the problem.

Malcolm

----- Original Message -----
From: "zxq9" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Tuesday, 17 July, 2012 11:02:38 AM
Subject: Re: X11 server won't start after yum upgrade

On 07/17/2012 05:41 PM, Malcolm MacCallum wrote:
> I could boot up to the screen saying 'Scientific Linux 6' and then get a shell
> (by CTRL-ALT-F2) and log in. Thus I got to runlevel 3 with no network connection.
> My problem was how to then get to a state where I could run yum with remote
> repos.
>
> I have solved my problem by downloading the relevant rpm files to my
> Windows partition and running rpm with suitable arguments, so I am now
> back to a fully functioning SL with Gnome etc. But it would still have
> been nice to have instructions that worked 'out of the box'.

I think you were looking for "ifup".

A lot of folks don't do the command-line networking thing these days, 
but just in case you need this in the future:

If you have a network configuration defined in 
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-$name then you can use the command 
"ifup" and "ifdown" to start and stop the device as configured in the 
ifcfg file.

I (and nearly everyone else) has a file called ifcfg-eth0. This is (one 
way) I can start a networking device as configured in that script:

ifup eth0

Some people (especially folks with lots of wireless homes) have a 
vairety of configuration files, so the one you want might not be "eth0", 
but I think you get the idea.