Bad update - X11 corrupted

[Martin Stone]

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>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>  
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
> 
> 
>