X.Org fails to start: Cannot write to /tmp

[OSX]

When I try to run X.Org, on my Debian box (etch), under kernel 2.6.8-2 and X.Org 6.8, I get an error message that says: Error:Unable to write to /tmp: X Session may exit with an error. I only get this message when starting X.Org as a regular user account.

 

[nweaver]

how are you starting x
x works as root?
what are the permissions on /temp
do you have the appropriate .xsession type stuff in your home folder
have you tried (as root) starting something like gdm or kdm and then logging in as a reqular user?

 

[OSX]

X automatically starts upon boot.
/tmp is drwxrwxrwt
X will start as root and run perfectly.
XDM starts normally when I boot the computer. If I login as root, XFCE starts normally. If I login as a regular user, then I get the error message and I go back to the login screen.

Also, apparantly .xsession is a new file. I only have .xsession-errors.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Is /tmp full?
Start without X and try startx as a non-root user.
As a non-root user: touch /tmp/test

 

[OSX]

startx as non-root from the command line returns the same error, touch /tmp/test doesn't return anything either, and the problem still persists. How do I tell if /tmp is full?

 

[n0cmonkey]

df -h should tell you the free space and other information about your partitions.
If touch /tmp/test returned nothing it probably worked just fine (ls /tmp/test should confirm it).

What's on the line or two above the error in the Xorg log file?

 

[OSX]

Okay.

df -h returns

Filesystem size used avail use mounted on
/dev/hda1 1.2G 1.1G 0 100% /
tmpfs 94M 0 94M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda6 2.6G 205M 2.3G 9% /home

ls /tmp/test
returns /tmp/test

The error doesn't show up under the XOrg logfile.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Filesystem size used avail use mounted on
/dev/hda1 1.2G 1.1G 0 100% /

That can't be good. Especially since whoever set that machine up didn't partition it very well. 😛

 

[OSX]

Looks like some format/reinstall funtime.

 

[bersl2]

Never mind. Yeah, repartition.

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: OSX
Looks like some format/reinstall funtime.

That'd be the easy way, but if you've got spare space right now (and I'm guessing you do unless that's a really small hard drive), you could probably manage to make another partition, move /usr onto it and then free up that space on / .

 

[OSX]

It's a 4GB Drive, so no. Though I've got a friend with a spare 10GB SCSI drive laying around.

 

[kamper]

Then you probably want to go with all one partition next time (unless you know exactly how much space you'll need for each item you want to seperate).