n00b with nix, I need help.... Help me debug....

[TheOmegaCode]

Ok, I need help. However, I don't want n0cmonkey to yell at me . I looked in the FAQ's, I looked throught linuxdoc.org and I cant conclusively find anything that helps.
Whenever my mandrake box boots, it goes directly into X. Well, *and I swear this wasn't me,* someone hard rebooted my box (they said it locked, we know thats a lie!!!) and when it restarted, everything would boot fine, up to when the box tried to start the X-Font server. I would see a very pixelated image of tux in the background (the log on screen) flicker in and out. My box wouldn't respond to any key-stroke other than Ctrl-Alt-Del. When the term signal was sent, I could see that the X-Font server failed to close. The box restarted, and now I'm at console (I booted in failsafe mode from lilo). Can someone help me out here? I browsed through /etc/X11 and don't know if theres a config I need to change, or what...

*gulp*

 

[Heisenberg]

That's odd. I don't know why a hard reboot would cause the font server to not run properly unless you've got filesystem damage from the drive not unmounting cleanly. Try rerunning the x-config program - just do "Xconfigurator" as root or look in "/usr/X11R6/bin" or "/usr/bin/X11" if it's not in the path.

 

[TheOmegaCode]

Pardon my ignorance, but I can't seem to get Xconfigurator to work. Here is what I did.
me$su
password: *****
me#cd /etc/bin/X11
me#ls
[...]
Xconfigurator@
[...]
me#Xconfigurator
bash: blah blah blah command not found
me#./Xconfigurator
bash: blah blah blah no such command or directory
me#Xconfigurator@
bash: blah blah blah command not found
me#./Xconfigurator@
bash: blah blah blah no such command or directory

When I typed LS Xconfigurator@ was blinking with a red background. I have no idea what that means.
I looked through LinuxDoc but I'm still in over my head...
n/m I think I found something. ./xf86config and ./xf86cfg seem to do the same thing. I'm gonna try to startx. wish me luck...

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

your filesystem might be fuxored, a good reason to look into ext3

anyways, try X -configure, or xf86config or xf86cfg. i'm not sure that's gonna help though, configuring X really just sets it up to work w/ your hardware. if the x font server fails to be shutdown, it might not have been running in the first place.

 

[LNXman]

The red blinking background means that the application the link was pointing to is BROKEN... May you have uninstalled a package by any chance?

If you want to know what Xconfigurator@ was pointing to, you can do a ls -l /usr/X11/bin/Xconfigurator. The last field on the right of the -> will be the location it is supposed to find what it was pointing to.

BTW, any file/name with the @ attached to it at the end, is mostlikely a link. To learn more about links, do a search on ln on google, or man ln in your machine.

Hope this helps. . .

NOTE: You may have to re-install the Xconfigurator rpm in case it no longer exists. . . check your rpm package manager for more information.

L8

 

[Heisenberg]

I agree with LNXman - looks like something is seriously fscked up if the symlink target doesn't exist. You can try reinstalling the appropriate packages, but it might be faster and simpler to reinstall from scratch.

 

[TheOmegaCode]

Yeah, I guess I'm just going to have to re-install... There's no critical data on the box, just my CS server and stats :Q. Hrmmm..... I really would have loved a way to fix it.... Well thanks guys...

 

[thornc]

Don't do that, this is a good chance to learn how to do some serious debuging... the reinstall path is the last
option you should use...
What are you going to do next time you have a problem like this, but with serious data (without backups that should
have been done)! Lose it all??

Just try to find out what happened to Xconfigurator, then try doing a fschk on that partition and go on from there...

 

[TheOmegaCode]

I'll spend wed to try to fix it... I'm off work till then...

 

[n0cmonkey]

I wouldnt yell at you for this one. Maybe smack you around a bit, but no yelling

 

[TheOmegaCode]

Xerror... Come one, come all!!! Help me debug this good stuff... I posted the error X gets. Also, how am I supposed to fsck something that has been mounted. I can't just umount -a.... or can I?

 

[n0cmonkey]

<< Xerror... Come one, come all!!! Help me debug this good stuff... I posted the error X gets. Also, how am I supposed to fsck something that has been mounted. I can't just umount -a.... or can I? >>



If you want to fsck a drive, boot from a floppy or cd and do it from there.

 

[TheOmegaCode]

fsck noted that there were some errors, and fixed them. X still doesn't work, though. Now that I'm pretty sure the partitions are 'free of errors' how do I go about debugging a problem of this magnitude?

 

[n0cmonkey]

<< fsck noted that there were some errors, and fixed them. X still doesn't work, though. Now that I'm pretty sure the partitions are 'free of errors' how do I go about debugging a problem of this magnitude? >>



Try uninstalling X and reinstalling the rpms.

 

[DaHitman]

ITs failing when trying to load a font... you need to probably get the font server running and it will all be fine...

Try starting it manually..

/etc/rc.d/init.d/xfs start


BTW... when switching to root... generally you need to do a "su -" not just "su"... otherwise you will not get your path and stuff setup right..so if you try to run commands it wont be able to find them..

 

[TheOmegaCode]

me /# /etc/rc.d/init.d/xfs start
Starting X Font Server :
me /# X
[...]
(II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "Mouse1" (type: MOUSE)
Could not init font path element unix/:-1, removing from list!

Fatal server error:
could not open default font 'fixed'

When reporting a problem related to a server crash, please send
the full server output, not just the last messages.
This can be found in the log file "/var/log/XFree86.0.log".
Please report problems to xfree86@xfree86.org.

So, if the XFS was started manually, does that rule it out?

 

[n0cmonkey]

<< me /# /etc/rc.d/init.d/xfs start
Starting X Font Server :
me /# X
[...]
(II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "Mouse1" (type: MOUSE)
Could not init font path element unix/:-1, removing from list!

Fatal server error:
could not open default font 'fixed'

When reporting a problem related to a server crash, please send
the full server output, not just the last messages.
This can be found in the log file "/var/log/XFree86.0.log".
Please report problems to xfree86@xfree86.org.

So, if the XFS was started manually, does that rule it out? >>



As long as it is runnong. A "ps auxww | grep xfs" will tell you if it is. If it is, check to make sure all of your fonts are there. Maybe reinstall them.

 

[kellygirlbeads]

arg, ok

as a sysadmin (hehe) i might actually be of some use here....

first, if your friend says the box hard locked, it very well could have, I've had a box that did that in 4 different operating systems (win2k, freebsd 4.2, debian 2.2, and solaris 9, turns out it has a bad ide controller on the bp6 motherboard, and likes to lock up during large transfers)...


Secondly, it sounds like you have filesystem corruption: specifically, one or more of the binaries used by the xserver are missing and probably gone. The easist thing to do is reinstall X completely. If you installed X the first time with binary packages (RPM, Debian's apt-get, whichever), uninstall those and repeat. If it was installed by the system installer, go to the distributions website, and download new rpm's and install it again. (the ext3 filesystem could have helped such a problem, ext2 is really bad on hard shutoffs. I sympathize, I've had ufs (freebsd) corruption that wiped 6 files from /etc, including /etc/passwd ... that's when having backups are really, REALLY nice)

Third, while they may tell you not to reinstall , and to try to debug it, I'll offer this: while you may learn more from trying to track the bad file down by hand, your pride and your sanity may suggest that reinstalling is easier: your pride and sanity are probably worth more than learning.

 

[n0cmonkey]

<< arg, ok

as a sysadmin (hehe) i might actually be of some use here....

first, if your friend says the box hard locked, it very well could have, I've had a box that did that in 4 different operating systems (win2k, freebsd 4.2, debian 2.2, and solaris 9, turns out it has a bad ide controller on the bp6 motherboard, and likes to lock up during large transfers)...


Secondly, it sounds like you have filesystem corruption: specifically, one or more of the binaries used by the xserver are missing and probably gone. The easist thing to do is reinstall X completely. If you installed X the first time with binary packages (RPM, Debian's apt-get, whichever), uninstall those and repeat. If it was installed by the system installer, go to the distributions website, and download new rpm's and install it again. (the ext3 filesystem could have helped such a problem, ext2 is really bad on hard shutoffs. I sympathize, I've had ufs (freebsd) corruption that wiped 6 files from /etc, including /etc/passwd ... that's when having backups are really, REALLY nice)

Third, while they may tell you not to reinstall , and to try to debug it, I'll offer this: while you may learn more from trying to track the bad file down by hand, your pride and your sanity may suggest that reinstalling is easier: your pride and sanity are probably worth more than learning. >>



Reinstall is a last resort. If the machine isnt mission critical he should try to resolve it. If it is mission critical he shouldnt be dicking around with X

But a reinstall is definitely a way to fix the problem if nothing else works. Trying to reinstall X first would be the best place to start though. (Ive reinstalled to take care of problems that were more easily solved with a reinstall or beyond my level of knowledge).

 

[TheOmegaCode]

Well, seeing as Mandrake installed X for me, I am going to have to track down how it was installed. Then, uninstall it, and reinstall X. Why the hell can't there be a /stand/sysinstall !!!!!!! I think I am going to try to drop into work tommorro (which is unusual, I am only supposed to go M, W, F) and at least get my CS server working again. If your asking yourself why this, of all things is important? Well, because my new mobo and proc should be coming in the mail tommorro, and what better way to test out your stuff than in a game?!?! I can test latency of hardware and internet connection... (yeah, right, thats the only reason I'm playing). So, as for now, I get to read about how Mandrake installs KDE2.2. Wish me luck...

***
Muhahahahaha..... I just realized, I love openSSH!!! I completely forgot that I had openSSH server installed at my box at work. Thanks to insomnia, I just jumped over the biggest hurdle... time!!!

Heres the scenario, 1:30am rolls around. I'm bored out of my mind, so, I install openSSH on my winblows box. I ssh into my FreeBSD box, mess around. Then, for kicks and giggles, I try to ssh into my box at work... Low and behold, it works(on a similar note, so does my CS server now)!!! Screw going to work tomorrow

 

[Poontos]

Yah, how do you uninstall X on FreeBSD 4.4 Release (comes with XFree86-3.3.6)?

I think I got the steps down on how to install the latest version of X (I download the .tar file off X FTP site), but once I get to that stage (after removing the current older version), I am hoping that I can just install KDE and everything will jive as it did when I installed them through sysinstall during setup.

 

[TheOmegaCode]

<< Yah, how do you uninstall X on FreeBSD 4.4 Release (comes with XFree86-3.3.6)?

I think I got the steps down on how to install the latest version of X (I download the .tar file off X FTP site), but once I get to that stage (after removing the current older version), I am hoping that I can just install KDE and everything will jive as it did when I installed them through sysinstall during setup. >>


Well you can man XFree86. That shows you all the files associated with it... I have yet to discover if deleting all those files is the equivillant of uninstalling X. I know I'm running XFree86-4.1.1.0 on my FreeBSD 4.4 stable box. I think if you, say, installed X through the ports collection, you could just make deinstall.
I think there is a .gz file in /usr/X11R6/man/man1/XFree86.1.gz. I don't know for 100% if this is what is used to install X though...

 

[n0cmonkey]

<< Yah, how do you uninstall X on FreeBSD 4.4 Release (comes with XFree86-3.3.6)?

I think I got the steps down on how to install the latest version of X (I download the .tar file off X FTP site), but once I get to that stage (after removing the current older version), I am hoping that I can just install KDE and everything will jive as it did when I installed them through sysinstall during setup. >>



pkg_delete xf86-3.3.6.tgz or something. pkg_info | grep xfree86 to find out exactly what the package is called.


It will be similar for uninstalling the XF86 rpm that Mandrake would have installed.

 

[Sunner]

rpm -aq |grep XFree86 should show you a bunch of packages related to XFree86.

Haven't used an RPM based distro in a while, so I dont remember which packages do what, but anyways, you should be able to figure that out.
Just force uninstall the XFS packages, then reinstall them from the Mandrake CD.