up2date ruined my system
 

ok I got fedora installed on my Toshiba tecra 9000 laptop. It's dual boot with XP using the Grub boot loader. I had it installed for about 2 hours before I decided I should get all the latest security patches etc etc. Bad move or what!! I am new to linux and haven't got a much of a clue what has happened but the up2date froze and I rebooted the laptop. Then the system threw an error up about not being able to load X windows (I didn't write it down)

Now when I boot the laptop the shell login shows for a couple of seconds then it keeps trying to load X windows and keeps getting thrown back to the login prompt for the next couple of seconds

i can't get it too stay at the shell for more than a couple of seconds. I tried to hit alt+backspace but nothing seems to work. How do I boot into shell prompt so I can have a play around? :D

Please could someone tell me where to start looking on my system to try and fix this!?

Don't want to re-install as that would be cheating and I won't of learned anything!

Thanks

Phil

P.S I have read the other posts about this problem but i still don't get it

please can someone just post how to boot into a shell prompt

I have been sat here for 2 hours trying

I must be soooooo thick but I just can't find out how to do it

surely someone can tell me how to get to a shell prompt from grub????

Just as a guess, but when you get to the GRUB screen, press esc, and then "e" to modify the boot arguments. append a 1 or a 3 to the end of the line and you'll start in runlevel 1 (single user mode) or runlevel 3 (multiuser mode, no X). Its default is setup to run at runlevel 5.

Try this when it keeps trying to load X
hit Ctrl-Alt-F1 or Ctrl-Alt-F2 to get to a command line. Keep trying if get a terminal
login as root and to try to get X back, run this command

$XFree86 -configure
$XFree86 -xf86config /root/XF86Config.net
You should see a black screen with an X cursor hit Ctrl-Alt-Backspace
$ cp /root/XF86Config.new /etc/X11/XF86Config

Overwrite the file? say yes

reboot and see what happens :D

None of those things worked. This is really bugging me,


I can't figure out how to re-install either because I have dual boot with XP on one hdd and can't figure out how to just delete the linux partitions and start again

really angry at fedora. Can't see windows update doing this!!

To re-install is just installing over you linux partition.

in the grub screen.
1. select the linux option
2. type "e" to edit that option
3. select the second line - the line containing the "kernel ...."
4. type "e" to edit that line
5. insert " S" (append "S" to the end of that line)
6. press "esc"
7. type b to boot to single user mode
8. run redhat-config-xfree86 (if you're running redhat or fedora).....

Cheers

hello and thanks for your help

i ran the redhat-config-xfree86 command

the screen flickered for a second then I got the following error message:

xconf.py: Fatal IO error 2 (Connection reset by peer) on X server :17.0.

Please can anybody help?

The same EXACT thing happened to me. I just did a reinstall, nothing to lose but a little bit of my time. You'll spend more time trying to fix anyway. Just boot from your fedora installation cd and go through the installation again. When you get to the partition part, choose to do a manual partition. Then just rename the mount points with the same name they used to have and don't change the size of any of the partitions. That way, you know for sure that you are reinstalling over the exact same partitions.

Once that's done you can do up2date again, but make sure to uncheck any of the updates that start with XFree86.

This worked for me.

Do what Cookie said.

Addition information:

When you use up2date from a dial up connection some items can take a very long time. From minutes to hours. Sometimes the download with seem to stop or slow down and then it will start up again. You don't have to select all the items at once. You can select one item and install it. Then you can log back in again and select more items. If you get any message that says the file is bad in any way if will ask you if you want to accept it, say no. Then log back in and start over and try that item again. On some big updates it's taken me two or three tries, till it downloads with out any error messages. I've used up2date for at least a year and a half with no problems. Everything that successfully downloaded worked perfectly. I updated from RH9 to Fedora with no problems. (Grub dual boot with XP.) Always try to shut down, log out, halt correctly, even it you have to wait a very long time, rare 30 minutes, hour. I've had to repeatedly use CTRL-ALT-Backspace until I got a command line a few times in the early days. Everything has basically worked well for me for a long time.

If you ever decide to reinstall Fedora, delete up2date because IMHO it is a pos. I have used it and I deleted it. Get either two things and learn them well, yum or apt with synaptic
I prefer apt with synaptic because of the gui interface:D

Hello all
I am finally up and running again after re-installing over the top. This is something I really didn't want to do as I think it is a cop out and more of a Microsoft way of fixing things. I must say I am upset with the way up2date handled my system and it seems like many people are having the same problems. Hopefully the people at red hat will take notice of this. So much for linux being stable and reliable. Now I guess I am going to look at apt. Should I still avoid Xfree86 updates with apt? Now I am going to look for some cool desktop themes and backgrounds :D

Thanks to all who bothered to post

Hi philF,

I'm a major newbie but maybe can add something here. I had the same thing happen. A real turn-off when I was so excited about trying Linux. But I just did a reinstall and it fixed it. (And, like someone said, Fedora will ask if you want to replace the Linux partition or all partitions.) I have also come to the conclusion that Fedora (and all other distros, if you read these forums...) are pretty flakey and not quite invented unless you have lots of knowledge and experience. But this is how you get both and I still love UNIX and am liking Fedora more every day.

You might check out my recent posting in the "Software" forum called something like: "Audio Heaven ...".
I installed apt (apt-get) from the great "Planet CCRMA" website and my life started getting better right away. This site is mostly for audio apps but it's worth it for the easy instructions and installation of apt which, as far as I can see, makes up2date obsolete. I certainly won't touch it again with a ten foot pole.

Hope this helps and hang in there with Linux.

utah

up2date uses yum