[NTLUG:Discuss] help request

[Chris Cox]

Fred wrote:
> Well, it finally happened. My dear momma's computer bit the dust.
> Partially, that is and I am embarassed that I cannot figure out what
> is wrong. I have a few ideas, but...
> 
> X won't start on boot. The OS (Mandrake 9.0) says it is at init 5
> (multiuser, X). I cannot glean much from the log files. The system
> had been working for 2 years and suddenly quit (A big clue). Console
> operations work ok. 
> 
> Error messages are few, but there is one about no mouse (sorry, it
> was a few days ago and I don't remember the exact wording) and
> another about file not found when attempting a startx command. 
> 
> What would cause this kind of failure? A scribbled disk? Maybe from a
> power hit? She has no battery backup and she leaves the system on all
> the time.
> 
> Her operations are all web based (email, banking, etc) which drove
> the decision to install Linux instead of Windows. I have not heard of
> any virii or other problems affecting Linux in the wild, especially
> not something like this.
> 
> I have the original cd's around here somewhere, so I could reload the
> os, but I worry about what will get wiped out in the process. /home
> should be ok. I could take the drive and add it to my system and
> backup everything to data dvd first. I could also bring the system up
> to date with SuSE9.3 but I doubt that will happen unless the time it
> takes to fix the problem is more that it takes to replace it.
> 
> I welcome all thoughts and suggestions.

Since it's Mandrake and MDK favors KDE for a desktop, it's quite
possible that there's some cruft in /tmp and possibly even in
her home dir that's keeping things from starting.

What happens when you just type X from the conole line?
You may want to do an "init 3" before trying that.

There are too many variables to make a good guess at this point.