On Wed, 2005-02-23 at 21:39 +0100, Truls Gulbrandsen wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Tony Dietrich wrote: > | On Tuesday 22 Feb 2005 20:58, Truls Gulbrandsen wrote: > | > |>Alexander Dalloz wrote: > |>| Am Di, den 22.02.2005 schrieb Truls Gulbrandsen um 21:32: > |>|>I have upgraded two of my systems, a TP30 and an IBM desktop, with the > |>|>most resent udates. After upgrading I am unable to log in as user. The > |>|>message I receive is: "GDM could not write to your authorization file. > |>|>This could mean that you are out of disk space or that your home > |>|>direcoty could not be opened for writing. In any case, it is not > |>|>possible to log in. Please contact your system administrator". > |>|> > |>|>I am able to log in as root. I am quite sure that there is enough disk > |>|>space so the problem is probably something else, but what? Any > |>|>suggestions that will assist. > |>|> > |>|> > |>|>Truls > |>| > |>| Any chance you changed the permissions or ownership of /tmp by accident? > |>| > |>| $ ls -ld /tmp > |>| drwxrwxrwt 31 root root 1688 22. Feb 20:29 /tmp > |>| > |>| This is "chmod 1777" and a must. > |>| Check too the permissions and ownership of your user's /home/<user> > |>| directory. > |>| > |>| Alexander > |> > |>I have only done a "yum update". The permissions of /tmp is equal to > |>the above. > |> > |>Truls > | > | > | Try removing any sub-directory of /tmp that includes a user's name. > | > | Authorisation files are written to files in directories such as > | mcop-<loginname>, and in some cases updates corrupt the setup of these > | directories, by either changing the userID of the authorisation > process, or > | the method of writing the authorisation file. > | > | If that doesn't work, try checking the home directories of each user > for files > | under the .kde|.gnome|.whatever_window_manager_you_are_using directory > for > | authorisation files. The rationale for this is the same as above, as > some > | authorisation files are stored in the user's directories in some > cases. This > | route may have additional consequences though so YMMV, and the risk is > yours. > | > Hi again, > now I get worried. I am still not able to log in with the established > user ids. Also, I am unable to create and use new user ids - well i can > create but get the same errormessage. The only one working is root. > Is this a weakness with this distribution or with Linux? Am I at risk > (of course I am) that this will happen to pcs with FC3? Now I don't > risk doing an upgrade and reboot of this "live" machine. > > Regards, > Truls Truls, This sounds like something is wrong with the permissions on one of the following /tmp/.ICE-unix, /tmp/.X0-lock, /tmp/.X11-unix. When I've had problems logging into X as normal users, I've deleted these files and directories from /tmp. ctrl-alt-F1, login as root, init 3, then delete the above mentioned files and directories, init 5 and try logging in as a normal (non-root) user to GDM. A couple of other thoughts: The /tmp/.font-unix directory may also contribute. Stop xfs before deleting that one. Lastly, I hope, the gconfd-<user-name> directories can also safely be deleted in init level 3. Since it happens to all of your non-root users it's not likely a home directory problem, unless the permissions or ownership of the home directories or /home itself are messed up. /home should be drwxr-xr-x 8 root root 4096 Dec 28 07:30 /home and as Alexander pointed out /tmp should be: drwxrwxrwt 15 root root 4096 Feb 23 19:21 /tmp I would not have thought an upgrade would have corrupted any of these. More likely a system or X crash. Bob...