Why can I not retrieve my desktop?

[bschll]

Hi all,
I am having a very difficult time with Suse Linux 10.2. Initially I was in ROOT to change the permissions on a file and when I tried to get out of it and back to my desktop it would not happen. I have no trouble getting into ROOT and, I have no trouble getting into the terminal mode showing all the commands and chores during bootup. I can sign in as the user and it will activate the system but not display the desktop. I can go to ROOT and run all the programs, AND, being connected to a network I can activate the system and update files and run programs but it will not display anything on the Linux desktop...only on the networked machines.

I have tried *startx* and it comes back and tells me that there is no more room to add on to three lines, so it does nothing.

I am at a total loss and so far it looks like I may have to reload the entire program. If that comes to pass, will I lose everything on the machine and need to start all over from scratch? Hopefully it will just go in and correct the defective files and leave everything alone.

If you have any suggestions or thoughts on this MAJOR problem I would really appreciate it.

Thanks, Bob

[smolloy]

I have tried *startx* and it comes back and tells me that there is no more room to add on to three lines, so it does nothing.

What do you mean by this? Does this mean that you've run out of space on your hard drive?

Can you post the contents of /etc/inittab here please.

[bschll]

Thanks for reading the post...
/etc/inittab describes the various runlevels. On my system it reads as follows:

The default runlevel is defined here
id:5:initdefault

Does that help any?

By the way I have a 250 g hard drive and 2g ram that is hardly used PLLLLeeenty of space left.

[smolloy]

Can you post the exact error message you get when you try startx.

[bschll]

Startx message:

/usr/bin/startx:line 237: cannot create temp file for here document:no space left

/usr/bin/startx:line255same as above,I'm just saving typing)

/usr/bin/startx: line 249again same)

Fatal error: Server is already active for display 0

If the server is no longer running, remove /tmp/.X0-lock and start again

Couldn't get a file descriptor referring to the console

[smolloy]

/usr/bin/startx:line 237: cannot create temp file for here document:no space left

This implies that there's no space left for the log or lock files. What is the output of the following?

df -h

[bschll]

df -h

File System - Size - used - Avail - Use % - Mount

/dev/sdal 5.8G 5.6G 0 100% /

undev 1006M 76K 1006M 1% /dev

/dev/sda6 223G 14G 198G 7% /home

[smolloy]

/dev/sdal 5.8G 5.6G 0 100% /

That's the problem. /dev/sda1 is mounted at / and has zero space left (your /home directory has plenty of space free, but is on a different partition).

You need to find out what is taking up so much space (outside of /home), and try to free up some space. Either that, or try to reassign some space to /dev/sda1 (5.6G is a little on the small side for /, especially when you have so much free space on your /home partition).

[bschll]

I saw that when I opened the df -h file.

The problem is I am not sure what to delete from / so I don't mess up the system. Although it might be the better way to go. To make things worse, I don't know how to repartition the files to make things right again.

Can you help me in that area?

[smolloy]

Before we start trying to repartition, let's try to see what's taking up the space. Can you post the ouput of the following (which you should run as root)?

du -h --max-depth=2 /