I suddenly became unable to load X or KDE, am getting a warning that the root partition is full. The partition has 6 GB allotted, and generally contains about 1 GB of data. The only things I had just done were to activate KMail, which I'd never used before; and then run a backup using Mandrake's backup utility, which I used once before, and it seemed to work fine.

System is Mandrake 9.2, 256 MB RAM.

I can get to a command prompt, and under my username, I can see all my files, and access them. Under Root though, I get different responses each time I reboot. One time it will list a few of the usual files, along with a boatload of files named "code.****" where **** is a 4 digit number. These files can't be deleted. Other times when I log on as root, I see the usual files, but nonetheless, I can't access any programs, or X, or KDE.

Is the root partition corrupted beyond repair?

Thanks.

" am getting a warning that the root partition is full."

You can check how much space is actually being used in the root partition with the du command:
du -s -h -x /

Another useful command is:
df

See man du and man df.

"Is the root partition corrupted beyond repair?"

You should check whether the root partition is corrupted or not with the fsck command. Boot a rescue CD and issue the fsck command against the root partition. Be sure to specify the correct file system type. If you use knoppix you will have to umount the root partition first. Here is an example fsck command:
fsck -t ext3 /dev/hda1

------------------------------
Steve Stites