Problems With X?

[Carcino-Geneticist]

Howdy,
I'm very new to Linux and have for the most part avoided running into any problems with it. until this morning...
last night i installed all the new package updates on my laptop using
#yum update
there were quite a bit and i had to shutdown the computer once yum had finished doing its thing because it had gotten pretty late by that point.
this morning I woke up and when I turned on the computer fedora loaded to where the login screen should be, but refused to put anything up but the backround image.
The text interface still works though, so i think it might be X.. mostly because my laptop is close to 5 or 6 years old and the update might have installed something that it just doesn't groove well with. I really have no idea though!
I'm not quite sure what to do, and someone could help me out here that would be great.
Thanks.

[nujinini]

Hi and Welcome!

Please forgive this stupid question but if I may ask, are you sure that the update was totally done before you shut it down? You mentioned it was running late and if I'm not mistaken, after updates, its still suppose to install. Not sure though. Just curious

Thank you!

[Carcino-Geneticist]

yeah, I made sure it downloaded and installed all it needed to before i logged off.
though it might be worth mentioning that the log off sequence might have gotten interrupted when i accidently hit the power button while putting it away. those things don't usually completely cut the power unless you hold it down though, so i'm not sure if that would explain my problem or not.

[Rubberman]

Ok. When Linux applications write files to disc, a lot of the data goes into cache before it actually is actually physically written to disc. This is called "write-behind cache". When you powered down the system before it finished its full shutdown sequence, it likely still had data in the cache that wasn't written to disc, causing the system to be left in an unstable state. You need to do several things to recover this. First, boot from a recovery disc and run fsck -f /dev/sdaN where 'N' is the root file system partition to force it to scan and fix any disc problems. Next, you need to recover (possibly by uninstalling and reinstalling all of the updated components) the entire operating system. Who knows what got fubared. One way to do that is with yum reinstall <name-of-package>.... This you need to do from the console command line, not from an X session.

So, good luck. Expect to take some time to do all of this...

[Carcino-Geneticist]

Thanks.
I had to reformat my hard drive, but the problem got fixed

[Rubberman]

Some times wiping/reinstalling is the fastest way to get back operational. Recovering data, resetting system configuration, and all that are what take time. Anyway, glad you are back "in play".

[manish411]

i m having the same problem. but i din install any packages.
i was just working in the root and configuring my network settings . plz. guide me to reinstall my x window system.

[Rubberman]

i m having the same problem. but i din install any packages.
i was just working in the root and configuring my network settings . plz. guide me to reinstall my x window system.

Please post your question in a new thread. Also, post your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and details about the Linux distribution+version you are running, what video hardware, and what driver you are using, but do that in a new post.