[LUG] Big problems but I managed to solve.

[psutton <psutton@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

       Hi I tried to log into LInux today and would not let me load any 
applications under my user name,  a quick word with trevor revealed that it 
could be due to me timing out, and he also suggested checking the errorlogs,  

I looked at when I time out,  and it's set to never,  I then looked for a few 
logs,  but could not find one that seemed to point to something relevant.    

hoiwever during reboot I noticed some errors relating to unclean 
umounts,  as I was also getting sporadic crashing as my user (no probs as 
root),  I just guessed that perhaps I had a few disk errors or corrupt files 
,  In addition to crashing,  the screen seemed to be flashing a bit like it 
does with a dodgy xf86 config file,  and it seemed really eratic,  which I 
guess could also tie up with disk errors,  as the files could be slightly 
corrupted. 

Modifying trevors suggestion  (which was to delete my user,  and create a new 
one) I created a new user,  then copied the back up files for my old user 
from the cd to that user directory,  and using root checked the following for 
both group and others
Show entries,  write entries,  and enter, this was then set recursivley,  
throughout /home/newuser (check apply changes to all files and 
subdirectories),  effectivly giving the new user ownership of these files.  

It then worked as kmail will now read my old settings, 

one thing I also  got was a exit status 2,  on pppd so I had a quick check on 
my settings and noticed that I had left the IP address as static but empty, ( 
I had looked at this during setup and realised it was DNS I needed and just 
left it) as uklinux needs the DNS settings entering,   so I clicked it back 
to dynamic and solved the internet dialup problem (well it dialed out then 
exited).  

I am now up and running again,  I am aware however that my method of fixing 
this is probably dirty,  but it works,  and if anyone has a similar problem 
ever it could at least get them back up and running with e-mail so they can 
mail the lug for advice.  

What I can try now is what Trevor suggested and delete my old user account 
and recreate it,  

While this did not seem to preserve my settings for desktop wall paper it did 
preserve my desktop links, and restored my internet settings properly  so I 
then knew it was reading the right files and directories,  

The moral here is also "BACKUPS ARE IMPORTANT"

I hope this and any related messages are useful to someone. 

Strangly what has also been fixed is the shutdown,  it no longer gives a GPF 
fault it just says power down,  so the two problems could be related.  I 
remember someones computer at the meet doing this on shutdown. 

Paul



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