Winblows XP screwed up my X!

[Urza9814]

Ok...here's what happened...linux was running fine, winblows was running fine (well...my mom never said anything broke...so...we'll assume it was running fine :P). Well, this comp originally had win98, but the disc broke, so I installed winxp from my other comp. So the 30-day trial thingy ran out...meaning I had to reinstall. I booted into linux (still working fine) to try to backup my data. Not enough room. So I figure last time it didn't make me format the drive, so I put in the disc, get to the disc format step...it says I have to format...so I cancel...then I tried to boot to Linux, and it broke. Here's what happens:

I boot up, it boots normally, then the screen flashes a few times between black and dark grey. It then shows a console login prompt. I login, type in start x, the screen flashes a few more times, and it shows this giant error message, the bottom/important looking parts are:

"Fatal server error: Could not open default font 'fixed'"

and:

"XIO: Fatal IO error 104 (connection reset by peer) on X server ":0.0" after 0 requests (0 known processed) with 0 events remaining."

If you need more than that, I have the log...I can still access stuff on that drive via this prog I DLed a while ago...but I do not believe I can edit stuff through that...and I'm looking at the log here...this might help...this seems to be where problems start:

 

Error loading keymap /var/tmp/server-0.xkm

Couldn't load XKB keymap, falling back to pre-XKB keymap

(II) Server_Terminate keybinding not found

(II) Mouse1: ps2EnableDataReporting: succeeded

Could not init font path element unix/:-1, removing from list!

 

Fatal server error:

could not open default font 'fixed'"

[arctic]

wow... well, it looks like a really "cool" crash that did destroy your font-archives. maybe that can be repaired with urpmi from prompt, but i believe there is even a lot more broken in your box.. :wacko: so please give the complete output of the log-file.

Edited August 21, 2004 by arctic

[Urza9814]

Ok...that does not sound good... :S

The full log file is attached.

XFree86.0.txt

Edited August 22, 2004 by Urza9814

[Urza9814]

...I take it by your silence you have no idea what's going on and/or it would be easier for me to just reinstall?

[solarian]

this might be one of those cases where reinstalling would take less trouble (and time!) than fixing the damn thing

Edited August 22, 2004 by solarian

[Urza9814]

I tried to install without formatting, and it said I don't have enough free space. Apparently, I have NO free space...lol...so here's my questions:

1) I know what I can delete...how do I do that from command-line? what's the command?

2) is it possible that that is why it's screwed up? I just noticed when booting up it says something failed, and in parenthesis it says something about partition and less than 2000...I'll have to take another look at that, I didn't think anything about it when I saw it really...

[bvc]

similar has happen twice to users on this board, that I know of. They were simply missing their font dir.

 

uninstall X

rpm -e --nodeps XFree86*

 

reinstall

urpmi XFree86

[Urza9814]

...except I can't reinstall it because I don't have enough hard drive space.

hmm...perhaps that command is in the FAQ...

 

edit:

ok, that didn't work...I'm gonna try to reinstall again...

Edited August 22, 2004 by Urza9814

[Urza9814]

Aight...I tried reinstalling...I did NOT reformat anything...because I didn't wanna lose anything...still doesn't work.

Anyone got any more ideas before I reformat? I really don't want to...but if I have to I have to I guess.../home's a separate partition anyways, so all I'll have to do is reinstall a buncha stuff...

[bvc]

well if it was already working then you have the space for X. Unless I'm not understanding something. Could also be that since the partitions were so full the journel was not able to be saved or whatever. Don't install so much stuff! :D

[Urza9814]

lol...I deleted some stuff...but it's still screwed up, and reinstalling X didn't work, and reinstalling mandrake (without reformatting) didn't work. Any other ideas? I'd rather not reformat...but as I said /home is a separate partition, so it won't be THAT much of a pain...

[Urza9814]

I SAVED IT!!! WOOT!!! :P

I was running the install one final time without reformatting, if that didn't work I was gonna reformat everything but /home, figuring no one had responded in here yet with a solution, it was likely no one was gonna...so I ran though the install, and at the end there was that summary...I looked at it for like, the first time ever, and I saw services: 42 of 62. I clicked configure, wanting to figure out what those other 20 were...lol...so I was going through the stuff, and under system I find 'xfs XFree Font System: This is required for XFree to run correctly'...something like that. It wasn't checked for some reason. checked that box, and it all runs fine now! I saved linux for once...and more importantly, I did something in linux by myself for like, the first time ever! :P

this calls for a:

:woot_jump:

[sellis]

I've also spent Sunday wrestling with this problem.

 

A Google search turned up the answer for your particular version of the problem. The X Font Server (xfs) requires at least 4M of free disk space to start up. If, as you say, you have your disk completely full, then this is most likely the problem.

 

My version is slightly different. I copied a bunch of fonts from my old Windows disk into /usr/local/share/fonts/TTF, and then got this error when rebooting. I have probably overwritten or accidentally erased the actual font file it is searching for. (I particular like the way that XFS doesn't actually tell you which font it's trying to load... )

 

What makes it even more frustrating is that part of the graphical startup has happened by this time, and has altered the palette for the text mode that I am dumped into. To dark grey on slightly darker grey. In man pages, the color used to represent options strings and commmands is remapped to black on black .

 

My 2 year old son learned a few new words yesterday. (But he did correctly point to the screen and say "popooter broken", which is his first step to BOFH-hood, I think.)

 

Anway, now I am at work, I can use Google again, and have a number of things to try. First and foremost is to reinstall the fonts package, if there is one. If that doesn't work, another suggestion is to alter the font paths so that things are searched in a different order, or something else. As a last resort, I may ask some kind soul here (who hasn't borked their font system) to zip up their /usr/local/share/fonts directory and post it as an attachment so I can put it back.

 

Then, I take the advice of the poster who said "back up your /usr and /etc directories when you have a good installation."

 

Anyway, more experimenting tonight, and I'll let you know how it turns out.

[nmsa]

My / was 100% full

I moved lib and src dirs from /usr to my /home and made a ln -s to the new directories.

I rebooted once and the problem was solved.

I had the same problems a few times before applying the above w/a.

[sellis]

Right. After a fun evening, here's a list of the suggestions found on the web, that did not work:

 

1. Rerun /etc/postinstall/XFree86-f*.sh scripts (this turned out to be a Cygwin tip)

2. Reinstall xorg-x11-fnts (package not present)

3. Check /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts mounted at init time (yes)

4. Check /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/fonts.alias readable by all, not just root (yes)

5. Restart font server using service xfs restart (restart OK, no effect)

6. Reinstall xfonts-base (Debian tip - package does not exist)

7. Disk may be full (no, 10GB free)

8. Edit font paths in XF86config-4 (removed changed folder, no effect)

9. Uninstall and reinstall X (no effect)

10. Run XFdrake as root (no effect)

11. Run xf86cfg as root (no effect)

12. Check xfs installed and running (yes)

13. Run mkfontdir in changed font directory (no effect)

14. Uninstall and reinstall xfs (no effect)

15. Uninstall and reinstall XFree86-75dpi-fonts...etc (no effect)

16. Boot to install CD and run "upgrade" (no effect)

17. Boot to install CD and install without formatting (no effect)

18. Remove font directory paths from /etc/fonts/font.config (no effect)

19. Remove font directory paths from /etc/fonts/local.config (no effect)

20. Run fc-cache . in /usr/local/shared/fonts (no effect)

21. Remove ~/.fonts.cache-1, restart (no effect)

22. Replace X86Config-4 font paths with server path unix/:-1. Partial success. Can now boot to most users, but not my own. Network interfaces (as reported by ifconfig) not available, even after service network start.

 

Finally, here's the step that undid the damage:

 

23. Back up /home directories, reformat partition, reinstall from scratch.

 

Step 23 seems to work so far, but I only about half way through reconfiguring the system before I ran out of energy and had to go to bed. Knowing my luck, someone will now pipe up with "Well, all you needed to do was to run [3 letter command] from root to reinitialize the font caches and you would have been fine..."

 

Well, say what you like about Windows, I never managed to screw over the entire system to this extent just by copying some font files...

 

So, my valuable lesson is: if you're going to muck around with the system, take a backup first.