Downloaded latest upgrades and now cant boot

mpooley · 06-18-2007, 03:15 AM

Hi all
I hadnt downloaded the new upgrades for a while so last night i downloaded the backlog of 70 ish
after which when i booted up this morning I get this error
"x session: unable to write to tmp; xsession may exit with error"

which of course it does!! and i get back to the login screen - the only way out of the loop is to boot to the command line.
I have a NVidia card and am running fiesty btw.
I have tried changing the nvidia driver in xorg.conf but that doesnt work so i dont think its the video driver.

I am a relative newby and havnt got a clue what went wrong or WHY ? i thought this didnt happen on Linux?

thanks for any help

Mike

syg00 · 06-18-2007, 03:53 AM

Sounds like a (disk) space issue - what does "df -hT" show (do it from the console session) ???

mpooley · 06-18-2007, 04:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by syg00

Sounds like a (disk) space issue - what does "df -hT" show (do it from the console session) ???

thanks this is what it reports

File system size used avail Use%
Varrun tmpfs 506M 216k 506M 1%
Varlock tmpfs 506M 0 506M 0%
Procbususb tmpfs 506M 124k 506M 1%
udev tmpfs 506M 124k 506M 1%
devshm tmpfs 506m 0 506m 0%
lrm tmpfs 506m 33M 473M 7%
/dev/sda3 ext3 175G 120G 49G 72% Home

thanks again

Mike

syg00 · 06-18-2007, 05:19 AM

That cannot be the entire listing.

mpooley · 06-18-2007, 08:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by syg00

That cannot be the entire listing.

I'm afraid it is

tried it again but got the same result -- does this mean i'm in deep doodoo?

mike

tredegar · 06-18-2007, 11:26 AM

Quote:

does this mean i'm in deep doodoo?

It looks like it, but maybe all is not lost.

df -hT should give output something like this:

Code:

Filesystem Type    Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda6     ext3     30G   18G   11G  62% /
varrun       tmpfs    506M  108K  506M   1% /var/run
varlock      tmpfs    506M  4.0K  506M   1% /var/lock
udev         tmpfs    506M  132K  506M   1% /dev
devshm       tmpfs    506M     0  506M   0% /dev/shm
lrm          tmpfs    506M   19M  487M   4% /lib/modules/2.6.15-28-386/volatile

Note that I have something (/dev/hda6) mounted as root (/)).
You do not, yet you can get to a command line (for which you must have root mounted!).

So please try df -hT again, and post all the output.
If you still get nowhere, you'll probably have to reinstall, but make very sure you do not reformat your home partition. If you have important data on your home partition, I'd recommend you boot from a live CD, and copy your home files to an external disk before you start touching anything.

mpooley · 06-18-2007, 02:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tredegar

It looks like it, but maybe all is not lost.

df -hT should give output something like this:

Code:

Filesystem Type    Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda6     ext3     30G   18G   11G  62% /
varrun       tmpfs    506M  108K  506M   1% /var/run
varlock      tmpfs    506M  4.0K  506M   1% /var/lock
udev         tmpfs    506M  132K  506M   1% /dev
devshm       tmpfs    506M     0  506M   0% /dev/shm
lrm          tmpfs    506M   19M  487M   4% /lib/modules/2.6.15-28-386/volatile

Note that I have something (/dev/hda6) mounted as root (/)).
You do not, yet you can get to a command line (for which you must have root mounted!).

So please try df -hT again, and post all the output.
If you still get nowhere, you'll probably have to reinstall, but make very sure you do not reformat your home partition. If you have important data on your home partition, I'd recommend you boot from a live CD, and copy your home files to an external disk before you start touching anything.

honestly that is all the output i get!

should i try deleting stuff?

tredegar · 06-18-2007, 03:51 PM

Quote:

honestly that is all the output i get!

should i try deleting stuff?

I suspect you already know the answer to your own question.
For further insight, please click on "mpooley", find more posts by mpooley, and read them.
Bye for now.

mpooley · 06-19-2007, 01:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tredegar

I suspect you already know the answer to your own question.
For further insight, please click on "mpooley", find more posts by mpooley, and read them.
Bye for now.

???? i did that - it had no relevence to my present situation!
I assume you are saying find out for yourself ?