On 12 May 2004 at 18:13, fedora-list-request@xxxxxxxxxx wrote: > I tried using the RHN to update all my installed software. One or 2 > packages had corruption but after hours of tinkering I decided to try > "continue anyway" and see if it would just skip trying to install > those packages. > > Instead, up2date/rpm just failed and stopped when it reached those > packages. Then my desktop was acting strangely so I logged out. > > I could not log back in. I would see a text prompt (not the graphical > prompt I'm used to) for a second but it would disappear, only to > reappear for a brief second a bit later, and so on, forever. I tried > rebooting but when I get to where the graphical login screen should > be, I get an error: > > id "x" tried to respawn too quickly waiting 5 minutes > > (or something like that). I tried logging in to the console as root > and doing rpm -Uvh *.rpm on the /var/spool/up2date dir but it said the > files were already installed. Reboots continued to barf in exactly the > same way. > > I just (re)installed from my Fedora Core 1 CDs and did an "update > current installation" and now I'm back to the "text login then > immediate blank screen" repeating situation. > > I'm assuming I'll need a full system reinstall now (F*&#!!!!!!!). Any > ideas before I wipe and reinstall? There was nothing of value on the > system yet but still... grrr... just like Windows. :-( I had this problem, or one very much like it, and it did not prove necessary to re-install FC1 although there were moments when I thought that it might have been quicker. I do not know what causes the problem. I speculate that the size of the downloads when initially updating a fresh install of FC1 are susceptible to server load induced errors, probably a corner case that is not likely to be encountered when testing up2date against low volume test repositories. In any case the fix is tedious, but not difficult. You basically have to manually reinstall all of the components for X (XFree) from the rpms at FC, ignoring dependencies and forcing an overwrite of files and packages. This includes the font rpms and the hwdata-0.103.1-1.noarch.rpm. You might have to re- install gnome as well. To ease the pain I suggest that you install webmin: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin-1.140-1.noarch.rpm and install http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/1/i386 /yum-2.0.5-1.noarch.rpm before doing anything else. Whether or not you re-install gnome your desktop may be munged, in which case you have to manually add back the missing apps to the task bar. There might be a quicker way of doing this but I never found it. Packages subsequent to the error point in the mass update may have to be re-installed by hand to bring the rpm db into sync with what is actually on the disk. However, I do not know this to be the case, I simply did this whenever I encountered a discrepancy and over time all of the artifacts of the late unpleasantness have disappeared. I hope that this works for you. Good Luck. Sincerely, Jim -- *** e-mail is NOT a secure channel *** James B. Byrne mailto:ByrneJB.<token>@Harte-Lyne.ca Harte & Lyne Limited http://www.harte-lyne.ca 9 Brockley Drive vox: +1 905 561 1241 Hamilton, Ontario fax: +1 905 561 0757 Canada L8E 3CE delivery <token> = hal
