hello everyone. i'm a total newbie to the linux world, and after searching the forums, i cannot seem to find an answer to my question. i installed fedora core 3 last night and everything went smoothly. but after playing around with the terminal windows (or command prompt) it appears that i messed it up. i'm not sure what i did but now when i try use the terminal, it opens for a split second and then closes.

Q. how can i uninstall/reinstall/repair the terminal without reloading my system.

Restart box->login as root->ctrl+alt+F1->updatedb
wait untilll it finishes
$reboot

Ok, since I don't know what terminal you were using I'll use another example that may help you.

I'll use firefox as an example. Lets say you have firefox running perfect, and then you did something like add an extension that totally messed it up. Well since applications use directories or config file in your home directory to store your prefrences you can fix it by just removing your programs config directory and starting the application again.

Lets say firefox is installed to /home/username/programs/firefox
the firefox application when started for the first time will create you a config directory here: /home/username/.firefox
Notice the . at the begaining of the directory name, this means it is a hidden directory.

If you do a ls -al in your home dir you will see many of these tpes of directories. Find the one with the name of the terminal applcation you used and remove the directory. Then start it back up and it should be set back to default settings.

Change to your home directory:
cd

Find the applications config directory for your prefrences:
ls -al

remove the directory:
rm -rf .firefox

start the program back up:
/home/username/programs/firefox/firefox

This is just and example, the application name will be different and you will need to locate YOUR settings directory for that terminal application.

Quote:

[i] Q. how can i uninstall/reinstall/repair the terminal without reloading my system. [/B]

I do not understand how exactly playing with Firefox will help him repair the terminal

He can always use initial linux terminal using ctrl+alt+F1

I think you may have missed this line SlackerLX

Though you are, of course, correct, if he boots and the system goes straight into a graphical login, he wouldn't necessarily see the initial linux login screen (I don't, but that's because I've set it like that), plus he may not understand the ins and outs of CLI, so at least the example of where satman1 may find the config files is probably a better place to start.

Or he might just say "what the hell" and re-install (tried and tested newbie or windows drone "cure all").

No offence intended !

regards

John

i do have somewhat of an understanding of CLI.

the initial linux terminal using ctrl+alt+F1 did not solve the problem.

at the GUI logon screen if i login as root, the command prompt works fine but if i login to my user, the command prompt doesn't work.

can i delete my user account and recreate it?

$removeuser
Removes a user from a Database group

figured it out.

[root@localhost]# deluser -r {name}

then recreated account.