[ltp] Major crash with a TP600 on RH 7.2

[Robert Munro]

I suspect disk hardware errors.  Remove and firmly reseat the drive.
If you have a floppy or CD drive, remove and firmly reseat that too.
You should be able to delete the lock files; cross fingers, restart.
Then, think about backing up your data files - in case the HD fails.

Good luck,
R


Bernard DEBREIL wrote:
> 
> Hi there,
> 
> I have been using, on an everyday basis, a TP600 (300 Mhz, 128 MB RAM,
> 3 MB of HD),  on RH 7.2 ever since mid december 2001. In spite of a
> few things that I didn't like, it worked allright and fulfilled most
> of my needs, and, as far as internet connexions were concerned, I was
> making use of the internal modem, with the mwavem device driver.
> 
> Here is what happened this morning:
> 
> As I turned the system ON and watched the starting process, I noticed
> a problem with the internal modem, which refused to start. The process
> had stopped here, and everything seemed stuck. A CTRL-ALT-DEL brought
> no result. I had to turn the power off and disconnect the battery, and
> restart.
> 
> Upon restarting, I had to wait till fsck performed its job as
> expected. One or two inodes were wrongly numbered, which was said to
> be fixed, another 'unused' inode was deleted, and the system did
> finally start. Modem must have started allright this time.
> 
> A this point, so far, X used to start. Automatically, without my
> having to type 'startx' or anything. I would have preferred having to
> do so manually, in order to be able to remain on the console whenever
> chosen to do so... but I had so far no control on this with this
> system as it was ; X was launched in any case, whether I wanted it or
> not. Same thing upon disconnecting: I could not remain on console.
> 
> I'd better say that X was set to 'fvwm2': I don't like GNOME neither
> KDE.
> 
> This time, though, something very strange happened. The system
> remained on the console, and displayed the following message :
> 
> - INIT: Id "X" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes.
> 
> The word 'respawning' is really the one that was displayed, not
> 'responding'. I don't happen to know what 'respawning' means.
> 
> I therefore waited for five whole minutes... at the end of which
> another similar message did display... and then a third one...
> 
> I then moved my mouse... and saw that a cursor did show. I typed a few
> random characters followed by [return], and the system replied: 'login
> incorrect', which made me realize that I was, indeed in the console
> mode, able to type a login command, which I did.
> 
> After login, first command that came up to my mind: 'startx' !
> 
> The X system did start, as usual. This is, up to now, the last time
> when I was able to launch X on that system. I was then able to launch
> StarOffice, activate internet connexion, fetch my mail, launch PAN,
> then Netscape... I must not forget to mention that, upon trying to
> start ppp connexion, using 'pppon' script, the system had replied:
> 'couldn't open ppp database /var/run/pppd.tdb'. Despites this warning,
> ppp connexion had started allright. After about half an hour, I did
> disconnect from internet, and quit X. this time, by exception, I was
> able to remain on the console, and this is from there that I typed:
> 
> 'shutdown -h now'
> 
> During shutdown process, a few abnormal things happened, but I can't
> make an accurate account of it, since nothing remained after shutdown
> was complete. A few thing refused to shutdown, and filesystems refused
> to dismount, as far as I had time to quickly read.
> 
> Upon restart, a few more abnormal things appeared:
> 
> configuring of serial port for mwave modem: FAILED !
> 
> Then, again, I was left on the console. Upon calling 'startx', I got:
> 
> -xauth: error in locking authority file /home/bd/.Xauthority
> 
> This message displayed four times in a roll.
> 
> Then: Fatal server error
> Can't read lock file /tmp/.X0-lock
> please report problems to...
> giving up
> xinit: no such file or directory (errno2): unable to connect to X
> server.
> Xinit: no such process (errno3). Server error.
> Xauth: error in locking up authority file /home/bd/.Xauthority.
> 
> However, this file /home/bd/.Xauthority does exist, it is 409 bytes
> long, dated half an hour before or so. I can also notice a file
> '.Xauthority-c', with zero bytes.
> 
> If I browse the ./xsession-error file, I get:
> 
> 'ERROR: file '.fvwm2rc"' not found in $HOME or in /etc/X11/fvwm2.
> Trying to read system rc file.
> 
> Sh: wmconfig command not found
> xterm fatal Ioerror 32 (broken pipe) or KillClient or X server ":00"M
> 
> I then went into another shutdown process. Same errors as before did
> appear. Upon restarting, I noticed the following error message, which
> may have already existed the time before:
> 
> starting system logger /var/log/messages
> syslogd: /var/log/messages
> input/output error
> syslogd: /var/log/messages: Input/output error.
> 
> Third shutdown. At first, for this third shutdown, the system
> acknowledged in saying:
> 
> 'system is going down for system halt NOW'.
> 
> But nothing more happenned, and the shell sign appeared as if the
> command had been executed. Again, I typed: 'shutdown \h now', and,
> this time, it did shutdown.
> 
> Third and fourth restarting tests have allowed me to trace a few
> errors that I had not noticed before, even though they most likely
> were already there:
> 
> - starting mwave manager now always fails in configuring serial port.
> 
> - Can't read lock file /tmp/./X0-lock.
> 
> At that time, I tried to re-initiate X, using Xconfigurator. But I
> failed in doing so.
> 
> Thanks in advance for greatly expected help
> 
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