Login loop

[jimmy9pints1]

Hi,
I've been on holiday for a week and just come back and fired up my Amahi server. I don't usually turn it off so this is probably the first time in weeks I have booted it. Obviously I haven't done anything to it while away but suddenly I have a problem. I would explain it but it is perfectly described here.

The symptoms he describes are exactly the same as mine.

So at the "localhost login:" prompt, I typed my username and password (which has to be done very quickly because the prompt disappears very quickly). Then I get my normal shell prompt, but still no GUI. So, I typed:

Code: Select all

startx

Which gives a lot of text on the screen about creating some authority file and finally ending up with this:

Fatal server error:
Cannot establish any listening sockets - Make sure an X server isn't already running

Then the computer continues in its cycle of blank screen, then mouse cursor showing (the little linux x cursor you get when it's loading), then the fedora pointer (with the circling blue loading icon) and then back to the command line.

Any ideas on the causes of this and how I can remedy this?

Cheers,
James

[jfrenc14]

I have had that problem before, I would try running"system-config-display " and if it says the command is not known run "su -c 'yum install system-config-display ' "

[jimmy9pints1]

Thanks.

I'll try that, but is there anyway that I can bring the CLI prompt up easily? Otherwise I have to wait for 5 minutes or more for it to appear...then it disappears again before I have had chance to type anything.

[cpg]

when the first fedora splashscreen comes up (grub) comes up, you can

- press any key to go to the menu
- move the cursor to the kernel line you usually boot
- press 'e' to edit that line
- go to the end of the line and add a '3' (without quotes)
- press escape to exit the edit
- press 'b' to boot that entry

this will take you to runlevel 3, which is regular multiuser level without X and you won't get the X crashes you are getting.
(gdm is really what is crashing, probably because X is, somehow, not configured properly)

more here.

[jimmy9pints1]

OK will try that.

Incidentally, booting up to this point takes a long time. The details show that MySQL, smb, nmb, Avahi daemon all fail to load.
Then there's another error message which is something like:
bin/bash/ line 1. 5674 aborted

[cpg]

ok. looks like you have some corruption on your hands.

if it's repeatable, it may be hardware (hard to tell what) - or disk corruption perhaps (boot to initlevel 1 and check the disk - use fsck).

if it seems random, it may be RAM problems! check it with the mem checker (memx86) in the fedora dvd.

[jimmy9pints1]

I have had that problem before, I would try running"system-config-display...

That gives:
"No video cards were found on this machine, exiting."

Strange... this was all working fine a week ago.

[cpg]

maybe the video card became lose?
can you try another, similar, if possible, card?

[jimmy9pints1]

ok. looks like you have some corruption on your hands.

Great. Just what I need.

if it's repeatable, it may be hardware (hard to tell what) - or disk corruption perhaps (boot to initlevel 1 and check the disk - use fsck).

I booted to initlevel 1 and ran fsck but it gave me a warning that running this on a mounted volume may cause SEVERE filesystem damage. I didn't proceed. Should I umount the disk or what?

if it seems random, it may be RAM problems! check it with the mem checker (memx86) in the fedora dvd.

I'll try that first and wait to your answer to the first part.

[jimmy9pints1]

OK... possibly found the source of the problems. It seems that my disk, sda1, is totally full.

When I tried "umount /dev/sda1" I got "errpr writing /etc/mtab.tmp: No space left on device.

So it looks like the disk I have in this old machine has somehow got totally full up.

How can I remedy the problem armed with the new info?