Bad update - X11 corrupted
Martin Stone
martin.stone at db.com
Wed Apr 14 18:58:28 UTC 2004
Dick,
That's a good start. One item of concern: You say that when you ran X
-probeonly, your screen blanked. Do you mean it blanked and stayed blank? That
would be bad. It's supposed to blank your screen for a few seconds, then you
get back your text console with the latest error messages displayed on it.
So... we've determined that X doesn't think it has the fonts it needs... this
could be because xfs just is not running, but I think it's more likely that xfs
was the package that failed installation. Can you do the following:
rpm -qa | grep '^XF' | sort
and post the output to us? You should see XFree86-xfs-4.3.0-42 in the list
towards the bottom. If you don't, that could be your trouble. You might try
something like:
wget
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/1/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/XFree86-xfs-4.3.0-42.i386.rpm
(or download the RPM to your system in your favorite way)
and then:
rpm -ivh XFree86-xfs-4.3.0-42.i386.rpm
chkconfig --level 2345 xfs on
service xfs start
Then try starting X and logging all messages on your own with something like:
X > /tmp/myXlog.txt 2>&1
And let us know how that works out for you...
Cheers,
Martin
Dick Brown wrote:
> OK, there was no 'rhgb' in my boot loader, so I got in and manually
> changed /etc/inittab.
>
> The command 'X -probeonly' didn't seem to do anything helpful. I saw
> some text flash on the screen, but then the screen blanked. I checked
> the log file, but no help there. I went ahead and just ran 'X' and
> again checked the log file. I saw the following messages near the bottom:
>
> could not init font path element unix/:7100, removing from list
> fatal server error: could not open default font 'fixed'
>
> Dick
>
> Martin Stone wrote:
>
>> Dick,
>>
>> Here's a way to boot from the hard disk and skip the graphical stuff:
>>
>> When the GRUB bootloader screen comes up, hit the 'a' key - this
>> allows you to modify the kernel parameters that are being used to boot
>> your system. Backspace over 'rhgb' to remove it, then type '3'
>> (without the quotes) and hit Enter. This tells the Linux kernel to
>> boot to runlevel 3 instead of what is specified in /etc/inittab (that
>> would be '5' in your case.) Runlevel 3 is the normal runlevel with
>> all normal services running except for X. Much easier to troubleshoot
>> your system from this point than from a rescue disk.
>>
>> After you've booted to runlevel 3, you can log in normally and try to
>> diagnose your X problem. I recommend starting by trying:
>>
>> X -probeonly
>>
>> and seeing (and telling us!) what error messages are reported.
>>
>> Good luck!
>> Martin
>>
>>
>> Dick Brown wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks to those who have replied so far.
>>>
>>> I did make a boot disk, and can get to a system prompt with "linux
>>> single". The problem I'm having is that I can't get a graphical
>>> login. When the login prompt comes up, the system automatically
>>> tries to go to the graphical login. Unfortunately, it can't get
>>> there, so keeps cycling from text login to graphical login and back,
>>> so I can't do anything.
>>>
>>> There was one other thing I tried, and maybe this was bad. When I
>>> couldn't log in normally after the failed update, I tried
>>> reinstalling Fedora over itself. It seemed to go fine installing
>>> over RH8, so I figured it would be okay to install over itself, too.
>>> Would this have messed it up?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Dick
>>>
>>> jludwig wrote:
>>>
>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>> I recently decided to upgrade from RH8 to Fedora. I downloaded
>>>>> the .iso files, burned them and installed without a hitch (checked
>>>>> the md5sum and the finished CDs first).
>>>>> Unfortunately, when I performed the system update, the X11 package
>>>>> was corrupted. Now I can't boot into Fedora normally. I can get
>>>>> in through the "Linux rescue" from the install disk, but I'm afraid I
>>>>> don't know what to do from there. I'm at that dangerous stage
>>>>> where I know enough to get myself into trouble, but not enough to
>>>>> get myself out,
>>>>> so I don't really want to touch anything without some advice
>>>>> first. Is there an easy fix to this?
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>> Dick
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> What were the error messages, if any, while booting?
>>>> This will give me/us an idea how to help you fix this problem.
>>>> jludwig <wralphie at comcast.net>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
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