Okay it happened my Linux crashed - Well more like X11 crashed, I had to perform an alt backspace on it as it had frozen up.
Yes I know leaving my system virtually zero disk space to work with is unsound, nevertheless it happened leading to a crash....
Then again it's not like I haven't experienced anything similar in "that other" OS :-) which was the reason 4 switching...
Hopefully I can get back to a more normal HDD usage ratio once I get my new computer, but until then I'm stuck with a system that can currently only be accessed via the linux rescue option in RH 9. and I need to get back on track.
There is about 70 Mb free on the system currently (there wasn't when the problem occurred) - but I've fixed that in the hope that the problem would evaporate in a puff of logic - but alas it was not to be...
My problem is that every time I'm trying start Linux - and I get to the login prompt the machine orbits. (The login sequence goes into a repeating loop).
Normally I'm booting directly into x so in theory the graphic log in screen should appear but instead the following happens...
login appears (the terminal version)
If I do nothing the screen goes blank a few seconds - then the login prompt appears again.
No matter if I act immediately or if I do it after a few loops if I'm really fast I can manage to type in the regular username but not the password - they're too long :-).
But before getting around to typing the password the screen goes blank and after a while the machine either re-asks for the login user name or the password.
To beat the machine speed wise I've also tried to add a user that has only a one digit/chr name and a one digit/chr password - so I can theoretically manage to type both usr and pwd and press ENTER before the machine loops but in every case it just loops and loops endlessly even though I have time to type both usr name and pwd.
How does one get out of such a predicament?
I have access to the system files etc. via the rescue option and can edit files etc. via the edit interface of the Midnight Commander.
When I attempt starting X from the rescue option the following takes place:
startx
hostname:localhost.localdomain;hostname lookup failure
using authority file //:Xauthority
writing file //Xauthority
Fatal server error
cannot open log file /var/log/XFree86.0.log
I was then asked to contact
xfree86@xfree86.org - (however I'll try here as well)
Then I get the following error message
xinit: no such file or directory (errno2): unable to connect to x server
xinit: no sucg process (errno3) server error
I've also tried to type login at the prompt in rescue mode to see if I could force a log in as another user once the machine was up and running in rescue mode and got the following error message:
Kernel panic: VFS : unable to mount FS on 48:05
So no luck there.
I would prefer not having to remove everything X as I am not enough into the file structuring RPM installing / uninstalling etc. to be able to do so without having to worry about some of the data/programs still not backed properly up as I had no chance to do so before X crashed and about the process of finding and reintegrating external programs I have installed after X was originally installed. But that's perhaps not an issue???
Anybody got any suggestions to what I could do to get X up and running?