Help needed Fedora Core 4 install problem, X server does not start

[Bob McClure Jr]

On Mon, Jun 20, 2005 at 02:55:38PM -0700, Leila Lappin wrote:
> 
> <long X troubleshooting exchange snipped>
> 
> Thank you so much for your help.  I ran the command
> and it worked.  But as I log off and reboot I see a
> number of other errors.  I tried writing them down as
> they scroll quickly:

No need to write.  That stuff should be found in /var/log/messages.

> The following is a few of them.
> 
> NFS locking : failed

If you don't need to make any of your filesystems available to your
LAN, you can turn it off to stop the yipe:

  service nfs stop
  chkconfig nfs off

The "service" command will fail if the service never started.  Don't
worry about it.

> Ipchain incompatible with kernel

ipchains is obsolete.  Turn it off the same way:

  service ipchains stop
  chkconfig ipchains off

If you need a firewall, turn on iptables.  See if it's already set to
come on:

  chkconfig --list iptables

If it says

  iptables        0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off

you're good.  If not, run

  chkconfig iptables on
  service iptables start

You may still need to configure what to let in, if any.

> sytem logger failed

That's fairly critical.  See if it's currently running with

  service syslog status

If it's stopped, try

  service syslog start

If it fails to come up, it should cough up some error.  If it doesn't
there may or may not be some info about it in /var/log/messages.
("May not" because syslog writes several logs in /var/log, including
messages - a bit of a Catch-22.)

> Also after the desktop comes up I get the message that
>   a number of icons cannot be loaded.  Actually I got
> a very detail message saying that the location of the
> desktop directory has changed in GNOM 2.4.

More clues should be in /var/log/Xorg.0.log.

One could well say /var/log/ is your friend.

Cheers,
-- 
Bob McClure, Jr.             Bobcat Open Systems, Inc.
robertmcclure at earthlink.net  http://www.bobcatos.com
God is more interested in our availability than our ability.