On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 08:08:08PM -0400, Fred Smith wrote:
Gang:
I'm puzzled...
I rebooted a while ago (and in between the down and up, I installed Fedora 20 Beta on a USB hard drive, making sure it wouldn't mess with my Centos system). The install went fine, but afterwards, when I reboot Centos, it comes up with a black screen and a clock as the mouse cursor (small clock).
Tried CTRL-ALT-BKSP and the clock disappears and reappears.
I did "init 3" to stop the apparently busted X server, removed the X lock file from /tmp and attempted "startx", which didn't work either. when startx is run I get a bunch of messages ending with:
Initializing built-in extension XFree86-VidModeExtension Initializing built-in extension XFree86-DGA Initializing built-in extension XFree86-DRI Initializing built-in extension DRI2 Loading extension GLX Loading extension NV-GLX Loading extension NV-CONTROL Loading extension XINERAMA xinit: Permission denied (errno 13): cannot open /dev/null: Permission denied
waiting for X server to shut down Server terminated successfully (0). Closing log file.
curiously, when I log in on a console I also get this:
-bash: /dev/null: Permission denied -bash: /dev/null: Permission denied -bash: /dev/null: Permission denied -bash: /dev/null: Permission denied -bash: /dev/null: Permission denied -bash: /dev/null: Permission denied
So something is seriously hosed here. Can anyone give me a clue?
thanks!
So, I don't know what the heck happened, but I have what looks like a solution: a number of important files in /dev somehow had their permissions changed. I had to do the following:
chmod a+rw /dev/null chmod a+rw /dev/urandom chmod a+rw /dev/zero chmod a+rw /dev/full chmod a+rw /dev/random
After which X started and the complaints about /dev/null went away. As I worked thru fixing first /dev/null, each step got me a bit further, with more complaints about inaccessable /dev/ entries, so I just kept fixing them until the complaints went away.
I also compared permissions in /dev against my Fedora 19 netbook, which is how I knew what permissions to use for the rest, as well as being where I found correct permissions, as well as /dev/zero and /dev/full being wrong.
I have NO CLUE what hosed the permissions, and I can't be sure that there may not be some other items also wrong (that I can't see because they don't appear on the F19 system).
Can anyone suggest an accurate way to have the system fix all the permissions in /dev? some arcane options on rpm, perhaps?
thanks!
Fred
-- ---- Fred Smith -- fredex@fcshome.stoneham.ma.us ----------------------------- God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." --------------------------- Corinthians 5:21 ---------------------------------