Serious /tmp problems(ack!) I'm an idiot...
 

Earlier today, I accidentally did an rm -rf /tmp

Now, I was in gnome when it happened, and thought i was doomed, but my comp worked ok for the time being. Awhile later, I noticed Mozilla would complain about /tmp/lakjflsf.gz not being accessible. I didn't pay much attention again. Finally, it got on my nerves enough that I decided to reboot.

Now, I can't even make it into gnome( i'm typing from KDE, don't kill me.) I get complaints about /tmp/flecko-gconfd and a whole load of others, and the window manager never fully loads.

I'm really scared that I'm gonna have to reinstall slackware now because of this. I reset the /tmp folder and permissions, so it actually exists, but i'm still getting the same errors. I had just got my desktop looking pretty too.

Can someone please offer me some insight or help? I'm begging. I just reinstalled slack 4 weeks ago because I buggered up my source install of gnome 2.6.

Any help is greatly appreciated!!
Thanks all,
-Flecko

I can't imagine clearing /tmp would necessitate a rebuild. Things only end up there by applications putting them there. So a reboot ought to resolve that issue (assuming, of course, that the /tmp directory exists).

Did you make sure the /tmp folder is still there?

btw, I see mine has the following permissions:

drwxrwxrwt root root

I'm not sure what the 't' means. I would just make sure it's there and is world writable. If someone else can educate us on the 't', so much the better.

Garry

I tried making the permissions the same, not sure what the t is either, but that didn't work. I'm reading some gconfd documentation to see if I can't rebuild the directory.

Anyone else have any ideas?
I mean, I thought the tmp dir was supposed to be TEMPORARY!
-flecko

Also, I found this tip from fedoranews, so I'm confused now: http://fedoranews.org/krishnan/tips/tip014.shtml

Anyone have any more ideas?
-Flecko

deleting the /tmp should not cause any problem if you create it again.
the "t" flag on a directory means that only the owner of the file (inside the directory) might delete the file.
so, if you create the /tmp like:
mkdir /tmp
chmod 777 /tmp
chmod +t /tmp (sorry, i don't remember how to set the sticky on a directory in one step)
then you should get a fully functionaly /tmp
good luck

I just read this: http://www.gnome.org/projects/gconf/

And it says not to delete tmp while Gnome is running because it will mess up the two locks that gnome apps use to mess with the gconf database.

It however, doesn't say what to do if you do happen to delete the locks while Gnome is running.

Any suggestions?
-Flecko

Did you try the gconf-sanity-check-1 or gconf-sanity-check-2 procedure as seen at the web site you linked ?

[edit]
I just tried /usr/libexec/gconf-sanity-check-2
no output... maybe means no error?

LOL, just re-install Gnome from the CLI and start over..............
no need to re-install the whole OS!!

in your case i'd try to create a new user account, log in with that account and if it's working (i think it will) then delete the following directories from your home:
.gnome
.gnome2
and maybe the .gtkrc* file

good luck

gconf-sanity-check-2 gives me:

flecko@blf141:/tmp$ /usr/libexec/gconf-sanity-check-2

** (process:4121): WARNING **: Wrong permissions for /tmp/orbit-flecko


** (process:4121): WARNING **: Wrong permissions for /tmp/orbit-flecko-28a86888


** (process:4121): WARNING **: Wrong permissions for /tmp/orbit-flecko-28a8e8c8

flecko@blf141:/tmp$


But otherwise nothing.

And to respond to 320mb: I'll try that, but doesn't this problem I'm having have to do with my user configuration files?

I'm going to try reinstalling gnome 2.6 now though. Wish me luck.
-Flecko

reinstall gnome because of deleting the /tmp?????? wrong premission means wrong permission! you can set the permissions using the chmod command. just think about it... if you reinstall gnome it doesn't modify the files in your home directory or in the /tmp .. :(
okay, it doesn't matter... good luck

Yes reset the permission for the /tmp/orbit-flecko directory to the user flecko (chown flecko /tmp/orbit-flecko)
[ edit ]
-- to be sure be recursive
chown -R flecko /tmp/orbit-flecko

Well...I didn't fix it.

But I did workaround it.
I copied flecko's home directory to a temp folder...deleted flecko as a user, created pose as a user, and copied fleckos home folder to pose's.

I do have to redo a bunch of my preferences, but at least I'm outta the hot water. I love gnome2.6 too much not to have it work correctly.

Thanks for all the help and suggestions. Hopefully my nightmare is over.

Thanks everyone!
-Flecko...er Pose =P

Well hope for you too, just keep in mind the major problem from linux / unix come from permissions not correctly set