My "media server" where I held all of my movies and such just crashed, probobly because it was XP Home. Anyhow, I loaded everything back onto the server running Mandrake 9.2. Then, I created a shared folder titled movies. My first problem is that I cannot change anything in that folder from another computer, even if I am logged in as root. The second (and worst) problem is that I went to start KDE and it told me that I couldn't because my "temporary files were full" or something of that nature. I tried a few more times and got it to bring me to the KDE 3.1 loading screen, but it stops on "starting window manager". It just keeps blinking and then brings me to a blank screen with just the Mandrake 9.2 Download Edition background. I went in to IceWM and loaded a terminal and cleared my /home/user/tmp/ folder, but it didn't help anything. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

-John

Type df at the command line and see if your hard drive is full. As for not being able to change files, make sure your samba shares don't have the read-only setting on them.

Did the df command and everything was under 40% exept:

/dev/ide/host0/bus/target0/lmo/part5
5.8G 5.9G 0 100% /

Does this mean my root directory magically filled up?

If that is indeed your root partition, then yes, that is what that means. Though I highly doubt it was magic that filled it Probably files

Very weird. Reinstall Mandrake? Or maybe try my hand at something like Debian? It doesn't really matter as long as Windows partition doesn't get killed, I just want to learn Linux.

Well, you might want to start by seeing what they heck is installed on there. You can probably just remove a bunch of the glut and you'll be fine. Mandrake certainly isn't known for being slim.

One question, if I do decide to try something like Debian. What partition is the bootloader installed on? I know Debian will want to install its own bootloader, so if I just delete the partition that Mandrake is on will the bootloader go away too?

Well, typically I would install the bootloader on the MBR, and that is probably what Mandrake did. But I am guessing the installer for Debian is smart enough to format your partitions and install the new bootloader.

If I delete the partition that Mandrake is on and boot to windows recovery console and do "fixmbr" will that do the trick?