problem booting
 

Hope someone can help me. I'm fairly new to Linux. I've had FC2 up and running for a few months while I played around with it. Then last night I ran the UP2DATE thing and now when I boot it freezes up with a blue screen right before it should be asking me for my username and password. Any ideas what I should do to resolve this?

Thanks

I take it that's just a screenful of blue colour rather than a Microsoft Blue Screen (TM)? To bring about the latter you would have to install and subsequently mess up Windows or at least a Windows boot manager (NTLoader).

If my assumptions are correct, it freezes just before gdm has finished loading. To investigate further, you want to boot a Knoppix CD, mount your Fedora root (/) partition, and edit the line

in /etc/inittab :
id:5:initdefault:

to now read
id:3:initdefault

This will allow you to operate Fedora from the raw console, and you can do investigate further what the problem is from that point.

HTH,

Samsara

Thanks for your reply Samsara. It goes through the normal boot process and then right before I get the request for name and password it freezes. The screen is blue at this point and the mouse pointer is an hourglass. I've left it for a while to see if it would unstick but it did not.

I'm afraid I don't know what a Knoppix CD is. I've tried using the installation disks I burned to boot to linux rescue mode. I could not find the file you referred to to modify unfortunately, and I don't really know what I'd be looking for.

Any thoughts you have would be appreciated. I'm afraid my lack of linux knowledge may make this impossible.

Thanks

Ok I finally found where the inittab file was hidden and modified it so now it goes to the terminal instead of going into the gui interface. I tried running gdm from there and again got a blue screen with an hourglass pointer. I hit control + some F keys and got out. I tried running gmdsetup and got an error message:

"gdmsetup: error while loading shared libraries: libxlm2.so.2: cannot open shared object file: no such file or directory"

Anyone have an idea what that means and if it's something I need to fix?

Thanks

My last try. I downloaded an rpm file from rpmfind.net (libxml2-2.6.8-1.i386.rpm) and then tried what I thought would install it (rpm -i libxml2-2.6.8-1.i386.rpm). This gave me some "failed dependencies" errors. It looks like all of the files that are llisted as "needed" in the error report exist in the /lib folder though (I type whereis filename and it lists /lib/filename).

Does anyone have a clue what's going on?

you need libxml2 to run gnome ... sounds like you dont have it or it is gotten screwed up ...
first just try:
up2date --update

if that doesnt do anything try:
up2date --force libxml2

Hi Skog, thanks for the reply. It must have gotten screwed up when I last ran up2date, since then I can't get into gdm.

I tried both of your suggestions and both gave the error:

"error while loading shared libraries: libxml2.so.2: cannot open shared object file: no such file or directory"

have you got the raw command promp?
if so then type "whereis libxml2.so.2" to see if it can find it.
if not then install libxml and then that error should go away.

if you cant find libxml2 with whereis, and since update wont work install it off the cdrom

as root (FC2 disk1):
mount /mnt/cdrom # you may not need to do this command if you use automount
rpm -ivh /mnt/cdrom/Fedora/RPMS/libxml2-2.6.8-1.i386.rpm

if it lists a slew of dependencies then try ... save the list cut and paste in into vi
rpm --nodeps -ivh /mnt/cdrom/Fedora/RPMS/libxml2-2.6.8-1.i386.rpm
then do
up2date --update

if it says its already installed try
rpm --replacepkg -ivh /mnt/cdrom/Fedora/RPMS/libxml2-2.6.8-1.i386.rpm
then do
up2date --update

if none of this helps and you still cant run up2date you are going to have to install the dependencies by hand
rpm --requires /mnt/cdrom/Fedora/RPMS/libxml2-2.6.8-1.i386.rpm <--- will
rpm -ivh /mnt/cdrom/Fedora/RPMS/ deps in the list

A question before I go further.

When I did a "whereis libxml2.so.2" I got nothing. When I tried to rpm the libxml2-2.6.8-1.i386.rpm file I got a list of dependances like this:

libc.so.6 is needed by libxml2-2.6.8-1
libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.0) is needed by libxml2-2.6.8-1
libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.1) is needed by libxml2-2.6.8-1
libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.1.3) is needed by libxml2-2.6.8-1
libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.2) is needed by libxml2-2.6.8-1
libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.3) is needed by libxml2-2.6.8-1
libm.so.6 is needed by libxml2-2.6.8-1
libm.so.6(GLIBC_2.0) is needed by libxml2-2.6.8-1
libpthread.so.0 is needed by libxml2-2.6.8-1
libpthread.so.0(GLIBC_2.0) is needed by libxml2-2.6.8-1
libpthread.so.0(GLIBC_2.2) is needed by libxml2-2.6.8-1
libpthread.so.0(GLIBC_2.3.2) is needed by libxml2-2.6.8-1

What are the values after the filenames for (example GLIB_2.0 after libc.so.6)?

Anyway, I did the --nodeps line and it installed but then I got another list of errors when I tried the up2date --update.

My question before I proceed is, why isn't it seeing the files it says are missing? When I do a whereis on them I get:

"whereis libc.so.6" gives "libc.so: /lib/libc.so.6 /usr/lib/libc.so"
"whereis libm.so.6" gives "libm.so: /lib/libm.so.6 /usr/lib/libm.so"
"whereis libpthread.so.0" gives "libpthread.so: /lib/libpthread.so.0 /usr/lib/libpthread.so"

when I do a whereis on libxml2.so.2 I get:
"whereis libxml2.so.2" gives "libxml2.so: /usr/lib/libxml2.so.2 /usr/lib/libxml2so"

Somehow you have blown out your library configuration... they are there but the os doesnt know where they are.

try as root:
/etc/cron.daily/prelink

then try update again.

Logged in as root and did the "/etc/cron.daily/prelink" command. Then I tried the "rpm -ivh /mnt/cdrom/Fedora/RPMS/libxml2-2.6.8-1.i386.rpm" command and got the same failed dependencies errors I listed earlier I'm afraid.

Time to reinstall. Sorry. When you ran up2date it obviously didn't update properly and probably corrupted your os files. Good chance to goto Fedora core 3 I guess. Oh, I usually don't even touch up2date. It is unreliable. Just update through apt or yum. Good luck, hope you didn't lose much.

you could reinstall ... but anything/everything is fixable. the libraries are there but they arent being used

***forgot to put this in last post and my isp went down so i couldnt edit it and add it sorry about that***
try: this should list a whole bunch of libraries
ldconfig -p

if it does try: this should list 2 libraries
ldconfig -p | grep xml2

if either of these list nothing try: which listed nothing ... we just need to get your libraries setup properly
ldconfig
/etc/cron.daily/prelink

then try up2date again

Hi Skog. As long as you have an idea what to try next I'm willing to keep trying. I appreciate your help.

I did "ldconfig -p" and had lots of libraries listed.

I did "ldconfig -p | grep xml2" and it listed "libxml2.so.2 (libc6) => /usr/lib/libxml2.so.2". Out of curiousity I did "whereis libxml2.so.2" and it returned "libxml2.so:".

Then I entered "ldconfig" then "/etc/cron.daily/prelink" then "up2date".

Messages received are:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/sbin/up2date", lin 29, in ?
from up2date_client import up2date
File "/usr/share/rhn/up2date_client/up2date.py", line 36, in ?
import depSolver
File "/user/share/rhn/up2date_client/depSolver.py", line 4, in ?
import packageList
File "/usr/share/rhn/up2date_client/packageList.py", line 17, in ?
import up2dateComps
File "/usr/share/rhn/up2date_client/up2dateComps.py", line 7, in ?
from rhpl import comps
File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rhpl/comps.py", line 5, in ?
import libxml2
File "/usr/lib/pythone2.3/site-packages/libxml2.py", line 1, in ?
import libxml2mod
ImportError: /usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/libsml2mod.so: undefined symobol: xmlNewDocPI