Command Line Boot - Login to Aqua

[FlipFuture]

First off, I have searched for a few of these points, and what I could find, wasn't answered, or not in full anyways.

I have a problem, and I have a few things that I want to have happen. I am a long time PC user, and I got myself a Powerbook G4 for college a little while ago. Anyway, I am in no way a novice Mac user anymore, but I am having a few problems with my >console login and my CLI.

Firstly, the problem:

I recently had a friend over who has had a small bit of experience with unix / linux and the whole bash / darwin interface and what-not. I have always been a fan of these interfaces, however I have never had enough know-how to be able to use them. Simply enough, we started searching for something to load the powerbook into a CLI. We found a sudo command, and we tried it out.

We booted in, CLI working fine, and were asked for the login / pass. As I was entering the login, the screen went to an aqua color with a cursor, but no interface. No GUI, no CLI, no loading bars, screens or dialogs. No buttons, no dials. I can't express how much nothing-ness there was. Just me, a background, and a cursor.

All I could do was hard shutdown the powerbook. The second boot - Same thing. Third boot... Fourth... Fifth... No matter how many times we tried, the same thing would happen. Sometimes we'd get a few more seconds in the interface, but it always ended up blank, with a cursor.

Additionally, logging into the mac as >console gives the same result.

The only time this does not happen, is when the mac is booted into safe mode. Which takes a long time to boot into, and is not really a favorite option of mine. This leads me to believe that it is a software problem... I hope. I have not managed to find this error anywhere else on these forums, or the internet.

If anyone knows anything that could be worth trying, fire away. Anything short of a format. And we already tried zapping the PRAM. That was fun, but didn't really help anything.

What I want:

What I am really after, is a possible way to have a text-based boot and login. HOWEVER, when the login is entered correctly, I want the mac to load into the Aqua GUI. If this is not possible, then alternatively, is there a command that can be entered into darwin, to load the Aqua GUI ??

Hopefully someone can provide me with some answers. If you don't understand the problem, or what I have requested, I could attempt to get a screenshot.

Note: I REALLY don't want to have to format the mac. Really don't. If there is a fix, please please post.

Thanks

Flip

Edit: Added attachment of the error I get when I try to log in as >console. It's a bit hard to tell what's going on, but basically, I took screenshot by remote desktop'ing the Mac from my PC. As you can see, it's just a blue screen. Requires a hard shutdown after this happens.

[nixgeek]

---disregard my post---