I have found a serious problem. I use LILO to dual boot into a win98 and MD8.2 OSs. Twice now I've had work going for a couple of days on the Win98 OS and have done a normal power shutdown WITH a data cd in my bootable CD drive (forgot). When I try to power on and launch Linux without taking this CD out first, I'm getting an error in booting where some of my /var/temp files are lost.

My current status after the second time this has happened (the first time I just reloaded the MD8.2 OS and apps, but saved my /home directory data), I can boot successfully into level 3 (my default is level 5/KDE for myself as user). But when I try to "startx" I get an error/failure message that the "default Font" is not found. I checked the KFree86.0.log, as the screen message suggested and found that the file /var/tmp/server-0.xkm "could not be found. ??

I did a hard shutdown and re-launched MD8.2, and it went thru a file system auto-check, found the obvious (from a hard shutdown)problems in the MDL boot sector (fixed them) and no other errors. It still defaulted to level 3 start-up and I could still not "start". I did a normal shutdown using linuxconf from the level 3 commandline and I saw that the "X-Font sever" FAILED.

Is there anyway I can reload KDE (if that is what is required) without reloading all of the OS and all of the applications??? I would like to auto boot to level 5.

WolfzAz

Try to reinstall xfs package (you'll probably need -nodeps option of rpm).

Mmm... I'm not real "swift" with line commands. Could you give me the command to do this? I'm really very new at this.
John

Insert the installation cd, open a terminal, move to the directory where you have xfs rpm (something lile /mnt/cdrom/Mandrake/RPMS/ ), then
rpm -U xfs (press tab here, then enter)
It's and option to reinstall a package. Look if it works.

Thanks' Mara. I tried and succedded with this, but my linux OS is still broke :^( It's a tough way to learn. John

What's wrong?

Mara, Thanks for the help. It turns out I did not create a separate /var partition and my log files quickly filled my / dir. 'm looking into how I can add a /var dir partition and have MD8.2 recognize it. I have plenty of empty disk space..
wolfzAz

If you're going just to add it, create the partition, then edit /etc/fstab for /var. It'll look like other ones you have, but there should be /var on second position.

Mara, This fixed this problems. Thx so much! John