X won't start (SOLVED)
Bill Davidsen
davidsen at tmr.com
Mon Oct 25 20:06:21 UTC 2010
Bill Davidsen wrote:
> I did an upgrade last night (fc13, x86) to get the security updates, and
> on the reboot X doesn't come up. I think I've seen this before, but can
> someone jog my memory what it messed up? And thoughts as to why would be
> appreciated as well, of course.
>
> end of messages: http://rd.and.net/SJhX3LWZ6
>
Maybe I should call this one FIXED, because I am not sure how it got broken.
After the upgrade my root filesystem was very low on space. Rather than play
with sizes (not on LVM) I decided to move the two GB of /usr/share to another
partition and mount that.
What I did:
- defined another partition on sdb
- created a filesystem on it
- mounted the new filesystem on /mnt/tmp
- copied /usr/share to /mnt/tmp (yes with -r)
- checked that the directories were the same
- dropped to single user mode
- removed (rm /usr/share/*) all the old content
- umounted the new filesystem
- remounted the new filesystem on /usr/share
- got the new filesystem UUID and put in /etc/fstab
- rebooted and got no video
Having tried everything else, I used restorecon to restore the labels on the
/usr/share filesystem. Rebooted and got video.
I am reasonably sure I used "cp -ra" to copy the files, and if I didn't I would
have used rsync with the "a" option which also should copy all the label
information.
The clue was an sealert saying that the access was blocked to /usr/share/locale,
and I didn't hit on it right away because without X the warning didn't pop up,
it wasn't until I thought of selinux blocking some trojan in the update that I
checked. No trojan, just a failure in the copy.
I'm unable to produce a failure in either cp or rsync, so I will assume either
my typo or this keyboard which has been known to drop a character now and again.
Thanks to the two people who contributed some good thoughts on possible causes,
they both proposed workarounds for other possible causes of a problem of this type.
--
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
"We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked." - from Slashdot
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