Major Booting Issure! Please help

Pyro-dragon · 03-18-2005, 06:41 AM

Umm, I think I've screwed my machine some how.

Basically I restarted my machine because my USB drive wasn't mounting but when it came to booting back up, it gets stuck in a loop.

When my machine boots, after starting all the services and printing [ OK ] next to them it usually shows the consol based login screen before going to the graphical one. For some reason it goes to that screen, it blacks out then goes back to the text login screen. It just carries in like this. Please help.

My machine is a Pentium II Dell Inspiron 3500
It is running Fedora Core 2
I have recently installed Firefox and Airsnort on it but I have successfully rebooted the machine after their installation.

I can't really think what I have done to mess it up but apparently I have and it is really annoying because I have been doing my university coursework on it but I can't get to it now. :-(
As a temporary measure, if I get Knopix, could I brows my hard drive?

Thanks allot.

Linux.tar.gz · 03-18-2005, 06:44 AM

Yes you can. Slax is a good live cd too. 180Megs only!!
http://slax.linux-live.org/download.php

__J · 03-18-2005, 06:45 AM

yeah knoppix will mount that drive for you.

once you have the drive mounted, look in that drives /var/log for Xfree log and post the errors it is reporting.

audibel · 03-18-2005, 06:47 AM

Can't say I know how to FIX your problem, but to gain access to the system when it gets stuck like that, have to tried switching to a different v-console using ctrl-alt-F2?

Pyro-dragon · 03-18-2005, 07:55 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by audibel
Can't say I know how to FIX your problem, but to gain access to the system when it gets stuck like that, have to tried switching to a different v-console using ctrl-alt-F2?

Umm, I'm not quite sure what a V-cosol is. I will try it though.

As for the knopix/Slax thing, I'll just try that now.

Pyro-dragon · 03-18-2005, 01:04 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by __J
yeah knoppix will mount that drive for you.

once you have the drive mounted, look in that drives /var/log for Xfree log and post the errors it is reporting.

Right. The closest thing I could find to Xfree log file was Xorg.0.log

The last thing in there that looks like an error is this:

Quote:

Could not init font path element unix/:7100, removing from list!

Fatal server error:
could not open default font 'fixed'

What does this mean and how do I fix it?

Pyro-dragon · 03-18-2005, 01:39 PM

I've also noticed that there is a load of lines in the log file which loo like the following:

Quote:

(II) NEOMAGIC(0): Removing mode (640x350) that won't display properly on LCD
(II) NEOMAGIC(0): Not using default mode "640x350" (unknown reason)

Some look like this:

Quote:

(II) NEOMAGIC(0): Not using default mode "640x350" (vrefresh out of range)

And some like this:

Quote:

(II) NEOMAGIC(0): Not using default mode "1024x768" (bad mode clock/interlace/doublescan)

There are a few instances of this

Quote:

(II) NEOMAGIC(0): Removing mode (1280x960) larger than the LCD panel (1024x768)

ANd a few like this:

Quote:

(II) NEOMAGIC(0): Not using default mode "1600x1200" (insufficent memory for mode)

Does this hep?

Linux.tar.gz · 03-19-2005, 05:14 AM

Seems part of your X server is screwed. I dislike redhat/fedora/mandrake because of those M$-like bad surprises...
Try to access a prompt/command line/console and then, as root, relaunch xorgconfig or XF86config, if you have xorg or xfree as X server. Hope for you only the config file is broken.

Pyro-dragon · 03-19-2005, 01:25 PM

How do I do that?

Linux.tar.gz · 03-20-2005, 12:38 PM

You switch with ctrl+alt+Function keys (F2, F3, F4...etc).