Howdy:
I am having trouble booting X in Linux (Mandrake 8.1). Linux boots up, then when I type 'startx' after I log in I get the following error:

------------------------------
xauth: error in locking authority file /root/.Xauthority

Fatal server error:
Can't read lock file /tmp/.X0-lock

xinit: no such file or directory (errno 2): unable to connect to Xserver
xinit: no such process (errno 3): Server error.
xauth: error in locking authority file /root/.Xauthority
-----------------------------------

Can someone tell me what the above means, in plain English; and how I go about fixing it? Thanks for any help.

sounds like you got quite a problem on ur hands... i bet the pros'll tell you to do a chmod or somethin

Try to remove both files as root. Its a good secutity measure to clear your your /tmp directory every now and then (rm -rf /tmp/*). FHS advises to do it every boot. If its not possible to remove them you have to remount all involved partitions read-only ("mount -o remount,ro /" and maybe "mount -o remount,ro /tmp" ). Now you can run an fsck on you partitions ("fsck -f /" and maybe "fsck -f /tmp"). Confirm all suggested repairs and remount the partitions read-write ("mount -o remount,rw /" etc.) and try to remove the files again. Then do another startx.

Good luck,

Mathi

Did you configure x windows?

Yes I did.

i got a problem booting x now... my vid card was shot to s***... so i bought a new one.... it works, i see stuff... i reinstalled Red Hat 7.1 and it saw it as a generic brand... all the settings looked right... i logged in as root... did a Xconfigurator and the settings looked fine, i also did a xf86config.... But to no avail.... whenever i try to startx... it says

Fatal server error:
no screens found

When reporting a problem related to a server crash, please send
the full server output, not just the last messages.
This can be found in the log file "/var/log/XFree86.0.log".
Please report problems to xfree86@xfree86.org.

XIO: fatal IO error 104 (Connection reset by peer) on X server ":0.0"
after 0 requests (0 known processed) with 0 events remaining.

if you need more info, let me know
thanx

Has X worked previously? and or have you tried to reconfigure X?