Hope this makes sense as I'm pretty much a beginner at Linux. I've been running RedHat 7.0 with KDE desktop with no problem. I moved my computer to a new house and it started acting strange. At first it wouldn't let me log in as a user. Root worked okay. I played with it and eventually got in as a user but it returned to not letting me log in. Now the system boots and when it reaches the text login and the screen flashes getting ready for the GUI desktop it goes black. It returns every 2 - 3 minutes and stays for 30 sec. before going blank again. Each time it returns there is additional messages. "According to /var/run/gdm.pid gdm was already running (706) but seems to have been murdered mysterously". Each time the screen returns there is a new or additional message with another pid.

Anyone have any idea as to what has happened to me and what I can do to get back to normal operation short of reloading the system?

Thanks

Guessing u cant bypass the Xdm login (initlevel 5), boot into single mode (thats "single", "rescue" or "init=/bin/sh" on the lilo bootprompt), and reset the initlevel (/etc/inittab) to 3 (commandline, multi-user), when ure satisfied, turn it back up to 5.

Verify (shadow)password/group files, home directory access for each user.
Verify the startup messages by issuing "cat /var/log/messages" and "dmesg" and look for bootproblems.
Verify each daemon starts up w/o probs, look in their logs or restart them directly using "/etc/rc.d/init.d/(demon name) restart" syntax.
Now try to start X from the commandline with "startx 2>&1 > Xerror.log" which will try to start X, and dump the contents of the startup messages and any errors into the Xerror.log.

All these logs together should provide u with enough info to act on, or be a startingpoint for u to tell us in more detail where the shit hits the fan.

HTH, somehow.

Thanks for the reply unSpawn. It was such a rediculously simple problem but a mountain for the unintiated like me. I was able to reboot with a rescue diskette and change inittab to initlevel 3 as you indicated. I was able to log in as both users. /var/log/messages revealed the following: "Waiting [521]: Write_pid: write failed - No space left on device" Assumption was that hard drive was out of space. I had down loaded Star Office prior to the problem starting. I removed the download and am now able to boot normally.

Thanks again.