Permission Denied

[TheBigCheese]

I am posting here after my thread kind of was abandoned at another forums.
Here's the other thread on that forum. It might have some info to help solve the problem.

Debian User Forums :: View topic

I'm not exactly a Linux pro, so bare with me.

Anyways,
I've all of a sudden been getting permission denied for almost everything I try to do. Upon logging in, I get a huge amount of
"/dev/null: Permission denied"

The only way I can manage to get to the terminal is by Ctrl-C. It never brings up the command line, unless I do that.

If I try to startX, I get errors, also saying permission denied, and then one that says

waiting for X server to shut down FreeFontPath: FPE */usr/share/fonts/X11/misc* refcount is 2, should be 1; fixing

I also get many "failed" errors when booting, most of them saying that a file could not be found/located.

Check the thread link at the top for other information in the first post.


Is there any way to fix this?

I could reinstall Debian, but the computer I am using is a Libretto 110CT (64MB RAM), which has only a PCMCIA drive, for which I have a USB port replicator. There is no CD drive.
It was also a custom install fitted for the computer, so I'd rather not have to set everything up again, nor would I know how to exactly, as I've never done it before.

Any help?

[dijetlo]

After reading through your prior conversations about this, there are only a couple of things I can suggest.
First a "ps -al " as root from a command line will tell you if your running xinit, or you can do the same thing from top. The fact your hitting "ctrl+C" to log in suggests to me that something must be hanging in the background. Don't read too much into the font messsage from xserver, you can probably get rid of that by running fc-cache (or the debian equivelent).
You might want to post the contents of dmesg.

[TheBigCheese]

I get only bash and ps, when running "ps -al".

The contents of dmesg is way too huge to be able to type up, and I don't have any kind of connection on that computer. Is there a ceratin part that I can post?

[dijetlo]

dmesg | grep -i warning
dmesg | grep -i fail
dmesg |grep -i fail*
Also type in "man Xorg"-That's the manual page for your Xserver (0ne of the pages) in my distro, the server log file is in /var/log/Xorg.terminal ID.log check and see if debian has the same structure, You'll see the log files at the bottom of the man page below the configuration files for the server. If they do I might have a look at them as well.
You don't have an old floppy drive you could jam in that box? A memstick on a key ring? (great excuse to go get one if you dont have one...)

[TheBigCheese]

I get no errors from those commands.

I do have a floppy drive around, the kind that that would be put into the computer, not an external one, how would I hook it up?

If I could get my hands on an external one, would I be able to install debian through my pcmcia usb port replicator? I've heard that linux doesn't like external drives much.

What do you mean by a memstick on a keyring? I've got a usb/thumb drive if that's what you mean.

[dijetlo]

I get no errors from those commands.

Look through dmesg and make sure no version of the word "warning" or "fail-failed-failure" appears. it's odd to me that you have none, even a well regulated machine will have warnings in the dmesg.

I do have a floppy drive around, the kind that that would be put into the computer, not an external one, how would I hook it up?

I forgot you were on a libretto, BC, I don't think their is any way to load an ide device on the thing.

If I could get my hands on an external one, would I be able to install debian through my pcmcia usb port replicator? I've heard that linux doesn't like external drives much.

depends on the hardware, every OS is the same in that regard. If you have an external drive that's compatible, they work quite well.

What do you mean by a memstick on a keyring? I've got a usb/thumb drive if that's what you mean.

If you plug the thumb drive into the port replicator and run an lsusb, does the system see that as a storage device? The reason I want to know, whatever is going on with your sys is probably buried in the log or system files, if you could quote the logs onto the board, we could probably figure out what's amiss. The thumb drive will let you do that.

[TheBigCheese]

Sorry for posting so late, I've been incredibly busy.

I tried using my USB drive through the port replicator, but the pcmcia port doesn't seem to be responding at all.


In the dmesg, the only thing that I see that looks like an error is:

ACPI: bus type pnp unregistered
PnPBIOS: Disabled by ACPI PNP
PCI: Using ACPI for IRQ routing
PCI: If a device doesn't work, try "pci=routeirq". If it helps, post a report
system 00:00: iomem reange 0x0-0x9ffff could not be reserved
system 00:00: iomem reange 0xf0000-0x400ffff could not be reserved
system 00:00: iomem reange 0x100000-0x400ffff could not be reserved
system 00:00: iomem reange 0x4010000-0x403ffff could not be reserved
system 00:00: iomem reange 0xfff00000-0xffffffff could not be reserved
system 00:00: iomem reange 0xfef80000-0xfeffffff could not be reserved
system 00:00: ioport range 0x1882-0x1885 has been reserved
(The lines above is repeated 6 more times with varying addresses)

[dijetlo]

pci=routeirq
It looks like it can't load your PCI because of a bios bug....
Take a look here the mesage your getting about routeirq is a kernel flag at boot, reading through the site about debian on libretto it doesn't mention making use of flags so I'd save that for the last option.
The libretto doesn't give you access to a bios screen, but their are several keymaps that control boot sequence and other bios configurations,.