[plug] Help! stuck in read-only mode

[Bernard Blackham]

On Wed, Apr 03, 2002 at 09:18:51PM +0800, Sol wrote:
> I replaced the CPU cooling fans in my PC today. After replacing
> the fans the boot process aborted and forced me to run a manual
> fsck whichtook some time. After that I rebooted the machine and
> logged on to KDE - but no applications would launch. They would
> make out as if they were about to launch but would die after a few
> seconds. I'm putting this down to KDE having read-only privileges,
> because I Alt-F2'd to the console, logged in as my user and was
> able to use command line applications. And of course root works
> fine. But nothing will launch in X11.  Can anyone help?

Sol,

Check ownership of your home directory, and ensure that /tmp is
read/write/executable by everybody (chmod 777 /tmp). Also there may
be some directories .X11-unix and others in the directory. The
easiest way is to boot single user mode, and as root:
   # cd /
   # rm -rf tmp         ##### BE VERY CAREFUL TO GET THIS RIGHT :)
   # mkdir tmp
   # chmod 777 tmp
should clear up any left over scraps. and if that doesnt help, as
root:
   # cd /home/username
   # chown -R username.username .
   
And fire up KDE again. I had a similar problem recently, but that
was due to my own error. An ext2 partition dying mid-write could
result in almost anything, but this should hopefully clear it up.

HTH,

Bernard.

-- 
 Bernard Blackham
 bernard at blackham.com.au