GDM could not write to my authorization file ?&*%$^
 

I posted this on another forum but got no answer.
Can someone please help?
I am running FC# on a Dell Inspiron 4100 (dual boot with some other O/S....)
I was answering an e-mail and when I attempted to send, it told me it "couldn't create a mail message".
Then I ran up2date, and when I got to the updates to install (not much, as I ran in a couple of days ago) I was told I didn't have enough disk space, as the selected packages were 3KB! I haev plenty of disk space.
Anyway, I logged out, then tried to log back in and got this error:
[QUOTE:]
GDM could not write to your authorization file. This could mean that you are out of disk space or that your home directory could not be opened for writing. In any case, it is not possible to log in. Please contact your system administrator.
[/QUOTE]

Then I tried to log in as root, and got:
[QUOTE:]
Your session only lasted less than 10 seconds. If you have not logged out yourself, this could mean that there is some installation problem or that you may be out of disk space. Try logging in with one of the failsage sessions to see if you can fix this problem.
[/QUOTE]

Then in the same box, under "view details" it said:
Quote:
/etc/X11/gdm/PreSession/Default: Registering your session with wtmp and utmp

[QUOTE:]
/etc/X11/gdm/PreSession/Default: running: /usr/bin/X11/sessreg -a -w /var/log/wtmp -u /var/run/utmp -x "/var/gdm/:0.Xservers -h "" -1 ":0" "root"
Agent pid 4712
Not enough free disk space on /tmp
[/QUOTE]

So I logged in in failsade terminal mode as root, went to /tmp, but there's nothing that I can recognize as large in there, just a few dozen .tmp files and a couple of confd folders for me and root, and a couple of other files that didn't seem to be large files.
Anyway, I deleted a bunch of files from my /home dir just in case, and rebooted, and the same thing happened.

Any suggestions? Please help if you can.
I want my linux back

I think that you first should figure out how much space is available in your partition and how much you are using. You can use:
fdisk -l /dev/hda
to list the partition table. This will tell you how much space each partition has.

Then you can use df to check how much space your file system has available. Check this number against the partition size to see if you have any missing free space.

You can use du and df to find out how much of your file system space is actually allocated. Check this against the total file system space.

See the man pages for df, du, and fdisk.

-------------------------
Steve Stites

Thanks jailbit.
I knew fdisk and know the partition size which is 13GB.
My main Linux parition is 13GB on /dev/hda7 mount on /, that is, plus 100MB boot and 1GB swap paritions.
I ran
df /dev/hda7
and got 0 space available, and 100% used! I don't know what that is, it seems to be reading it as used when it isn't?
Is there a fix for this?
Many thanks.

"and got 0 space available, and 100% used! I don't know what that is, it seems to be reading it as used when it isn't?"

Use du to see how much space you have in allocated files. If it is less than 13G that means that you have partition space that is neither allocated space nor free space. To use du umount all of the other disk partitions because du will count every partition system in the filepath it is counting. Then use this command:

du / -s -h

If it turns out that you have missing space in the partition then there are two possible remedies.

1) Boot a rescue CD and run fsck against the partition (assuming that it is ext3):

fsck -t ext3 /dev/hda7

2) If fsck does not fix it you will have to copy your /dev/hda7 partition to backup, reformat /dev/hda7 with mkfs, and restore /dev/hda7 from backup.

----------------------------
Steve Stites

gdm authorization error
 

I too had the same problem as carlos1 and am running FC3 and found may way to this thread.. I ran the
du / -s -h and found that the total space was used up.. Even webmin reported 0% free space...

Then I deleted some files from the .trash folder and other useless stuff and I was able to log in!

I guess mostly it is really due to some space lost in hidden folders or some such thing.. While this does not explain the 0% free space on a 13G root filesystem, my root partition was about 6-7G and du reported 6.9G!!

so the problem might be straight forward... lack of space .. or as jailbit suggested.. go ahead and fix the partition...

anyways.. thanx to all ... my login is working!!!