[K12OSN] sudden appearance of grey X

[Barry Cisna]

Julius,

I'm not sure if you can do this, if you are 1600 miles away from
server,and you can not vnc to it. try and install Webmin so you can have
another alternative to accessing your server.
Next in Nautilus, drill down to:
  /etc/hosts.conf file.
You should have at the top>
127.0.0.1  localhost.localdomain localhost <hostname>
..listed
If this entry is not showing add it,,then reboot your server.
If this entry is missing things will work fine until the server is rebooted.
Something similar happened like this on one of our servers a long time
ago, and this was the fix. Don't know how the localhost/hostname
disappeared,but never had a prob after this.
Also, I presume you can ssh to this server remotely fine?
Let us know your progress.

Take Care,

Barry Cisna