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@xxxxxxxxxxx>
