I was getting started with linux by installing Fedora Core 3 (64) on an Emachines M6811 laptop as a dual-boot. I selected the desktop configuration and all installation defaults. All went well (except the Grub location) and I even managed to add 1280*800 to the list of resolutions by editing xorg.conf to utilize my WXGA screen.

Next I ran up2date and it took a long time and most of my available bandwidth to get all the packages. When the packages installed I received a RPM error with the open office internationalization package. Then I rebooted and I ended up with

Id "x" respawning too fast ....

My attempts to resolve this were to log in as root, use init 3, and then try to configure x-windows:
1) I typed setup - all options worked except the X-Windows configuration, when I selected that the screen just flickered and nothing else happened.
2) I tried to find xf86config, but was not able to find this file or any related sounding one in any of the X11 directories.

When I type xstart the screen just goes black, the keyboard freezes and I have to do a hard power button reboot.

What should I do next?

I am tempted to just re-install, but I don't want to lose all the downloaded up2date packages, which I'm afraid might happen if I reformatted the linux partitions.

Hi,

First, I have had lots of trouble with up2date. If I'm doing more than 2 or 3 items, I use yum. up2date uses the yum channels anyway, and my installation came with the update repositories already setup.

Assuming that you have a broadband connection, I would personally re-install FC3. Perhaps a more experienced user would know what to fix.

My worst experience was when I tried to use up2date to update my kernel. The whole system locked up on reboot. I've since updated the kernel using yum without a hitch.

Note that there is no xfree86.conf on FC3. Basically, it is the same thing as xorg.conf.

What all did you try to update?

Even using yum, I would recommend just doing no more than a dozen or so things at once. Open office is huge, and it would probably be a good idea to do by itself.

Do you have a second hard drive? You could just go to /var/cache/yum and look in the various repository directories for your packages. If you find them, just copy them to the other hard drive. If you're lucky, you Windows partition is a FAT32; you could write the packages to there. Once you re-install, you could run the rpms normally. (rpm -U [package name])

Thanks, I have indeed tried to get ALL the packages at once including kernel. I think a re-install would be straightforward but I would like to copy the up2date files to another location such as a FAT32 partition that I created before starting with Fedora, or my DVD RW burner.

The problem is that I don't know how to find the partition or the drive. I was able to mount a udf drive and was able to read from the DVD, but the device was set to read-only. With the FAT32 partition I'm also at a loss as I don't know what the name of the device in linux is.

Your fat drive should be fairly simple to find, as long as you formatted it. The order of drives is fairly straight forward. Let's say that you have your FAT partition on the master hard drive, and it's the fourth partition on the drive. It would be called /dev/hda4.

"/dev" is the devices directory

"/hd" means that it is an IDE hard drive or cd/dvd drive. If it was a SCSI drive it would be "/sd"

"a" means the first drive on the primary IDE channel. If it was the slave, it would be "b". If it was the master drive on the second IDE channel, it would be "c".

"4" means that it is on the fourth partition.

If you are dual booting with Windows, you need to make sure that Windows is on the first partition on the Master drive on the primary IDE channel. Windows makes the rather arrogant assumtion that you would never use any other operating system, so why build in the capability to boot from anywhere else? Windows, if you have it, will be on /dev/hda1.


I found a bunch of rpm packages in /var/spool/repackage. I'm guessing that they are from up2date. The /var/spool/up2date directory only has headers in it. Most likely, you can just copy things over from that location to your FAT drive using:


In case the *rpm is a bit mystifying to anyone, the * is a wild card. It means that cp will copy every file that ends with rpm.


BTW, my brother just called on the phone yesterday, and we had a 2 hour conversation about this problem. He tried to update to kernel 2.6.11 using up2date, and now his machine hangs on boot when CUPS tries to start. If he boots interactively, and says "no" to CUPS, it boots just fine.

Definitely stick with YUM for now. I do hope that up2date eventually gets working for Fedora. It really is a nice way to update.

Good luck

Thank you, I eventually found the partition as hda5 after a few tries, do you have any idea how to mount a DVD +RW as writable?

Not sure about dvd, but it Should (tm) be mounted the same way as a CD-RW drive. Here's the line from my /etc/fstab file that deals with my CD-RW drive:

/dev/hdd /media/cdrecorder auto pamconsole,exec,noauto,fscontext=system_ubject_r:removable_t,managed 0 0

If something like that isn't there already, this sort of line should work. Note that if you have a SCSI system, you would have to replace /hdd with /sdd. My CD burner is the second drive on the second IDE channel, but if yours is the first (at the end of the IDE cable for desktop users) then you would replace /hdd with /hdc.

I'm rather surprised that Fedora didn't mount the DVD drive. I certainly didn't have to put this line into fstab myself.

Is your drive one of those hot-swappable types? Perhaps that is confusing things. Laptops can be notorious for these sorts of things. Perhaps a search in LQ concerning setting up a laptop would be in order.

Good luck