Description of problem: I updated from RH8 to RH9 and the desktop stopped working. I checked the XFree log and got some stuff about fonts not set up correctly I played with that for a while and then ran redhat-config-xfree86 and got errors about not finding glade Installed glade2 and now I'm another person getting the rpm --rebuilddb -vv error: D: adding "usbutils" to Providename index. D: adding "hotplug" to Conflictname index. D: adding 4 entries to Dirnames index. D: adding 7 entries to Requireversion index. D: adding "0.9-10" to Provideversion index. D: adding 1 entries to Installtid index. D: adding 1 entries to Sigmd5 index. D: adding "df09a18d17b9a464e4e5c868a0dc3b67dc635f06" to Sha1header index. D: adding 11 entries to Filemd5s index. D: closed db index /var/lib/rpm/Packages D: closed db environment /var/lib/rpm/Packages error: db4 error(16) from dbenv->remove: Device or resource busy D: removed db environment /var/lib/rpm/Packages D: closed db index /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.1319/Pubkeys D: closed db index /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.1319/Filemd5s D: closed db index /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.1319/Sha1header D: closed db index /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.1319/Sigmd5 D: closed db index /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.1319/Installtid I've looked at bugs 83281, 85868, 88273, 88416, 89717 and have tried adding nosysinfo to the kernel line in grub.conf and have also tried deleting the __db* files in /var/lib/rpm with no luck This is supposed to be a harmless error but my system seems to be a bit more mangled since when I try to up2date -u -f I get: # up2date -u -f Fetching package list for channel: redhat-linux-i386-9... ######################################## Fetching Obsoletes list for channel: redhat-linux-i386-9... ######################################## Testing package set / solving RPM inter-dependencies... There was a package dependency problem. The message was: Unresolvable chain of dependencies: alsa-driver-2.4.19-1.ll-0.9.0-44 requires kernel-up = 2.4.19-1.ll But I can't seem to rpm -e those two packages (it says that alsa-driver isn't installed) # rpm -e alsa-driver error: package alsa-driver is not installed I then tried rpm -e alsa-driver-2.4.19-1.ll-0.9.0-44 and got a preun error so I redid it with the --noscripts option and it seems to have removed it I was able to get an up2date -u -f to work and received a new kernel 2.4.20-9 that was installed successfully (looking at grub.conf this kernel already uses the nosysinfo boot option) Trying rpm --rebuilddb again seems to come up without errors Same problem as I started with though, when I boot, it gets into X windows and I see the light blue screen and the rotating hourglass, but it flashes back to console 1 multiple times and then gives me a failed to start display server error If I login and type startx I see the xwindows X cursor and the Redhat bitmap flash up and then back to text console with # startx XFree86 Version 4.3.0 (Red Hat Linux release: 4.3.0-2) Release Date: 27 February 2003 X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0, Release 6.6 Build Operating System: Linux 2.4.20-3bigmem i686 [ELF] Build Date: 27 February 2003 Build Host: porky.devel.redhat.com Before reporting problems, check http://www.XFree86.Org/ to make sure that you have the latest version. Module Loader present OS Kernel: Linux version 2.4.20-9 (bhcompile.redhat.com) (gcc version 3.2.2 20030313 (Red Hat Linux 3.2.2-10)) #1 Wed Apr 2 13:42:50 EST 2003 Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting, (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational, (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown. (==) Log file: "/var/log/XFree86.0.log", Time: Thu May 1 14:23:25 2003 (==) Using config file: "/etc/X11/XF86Config" SESSION_MANAGER=local/ou812.johnson-engineering.ca:/tmp/.ICE-unix/1410 No fonts found; this probably means that the fontconfig library is not correctly configured. You may need to edit the fonts.conf configuration file. More information about fontconfig can be found in the fontconfig(3) manual page and on http://fontconfig.org waiting for X server to shut down Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): rpm-4.2-0.69.i386.rpm How reproducible: every time Steps to Reproduce: 1. I'm sorry that I don't know. Perhaps then I could backtrace my steps and solve it 2. 3. Expected results: Start shiney new, updated system and be amazed at the wonderful new features Actual results: Spent two days (so far) trying to get into gnome so I can get some work done Additional info:
I was reading /etc/X11/prefdm to see what happens when booting (found reference to it in the redhat reference docs at www.redhat/docs) I manually set DISPLAYMANAGER="GNOME" in /etc/sysconfig/desktop and ran /etc/X11/prefdm from the command line and the same thing happened as whe I boot up I changed to DISPLAYMANAGER="KDE" and again ran /etc/X11/prefdm from the command line and a login prompt appeared. I logged in and got a KDE desktop I went to /var/log/gdm but those log files don't say much (and certainly not any errors) so I don't know how to fix my system, but it seems that it is a gnome issue
The --rebuilddb error message is harmless. Off to gdm to try to sort out the rest ...
There's no need to guess at where the issue is; the error message says: No fonts found; this probably means that the fontconfig library is not correctly configured. You may need to edit the fonts.conf configuration file. More information about fontconfig can be found in the fontconfig(3) manual page and on http://fontconfig.org it sounds like your system is badly hosed (missing files and such). I can't speculate on how it got that way, rpm --force and up2date -f may have contributed, but whatever got it that way seems to be the problem, the software that relies on the files isn't broken. Try "rpm -Va" to see what's wrong, assuming the rpm db isn't confused. I'd try just reinstalling fontconfig for this immediate problem but with so many other problems I'm not sure it's going to help, you're going to get lots of instability. redhat-config-xfree86 doesn't require glade2, it requires .glade data files found in the r-c-xfree86 package... that one worries me.
I'll try running rpm -Va I've already tried reinstalling fontconfig with rpm -Uvh fontconfig --force with no apparant effect I'll also try reinstalling redhat-config-xfree86
Please try to avoid --force. If the rpm won't install without --force, you need to fix the error messages by addressing the dependency problems mentioned, not by adding --force. Otherwise all bets are off.
If I don't use --force to install an rpm that is already installed, it just says that rpm is already up-to-date Is there another way to reinstall an rpm? Or do I need to go through the dependancy dance to remove it prior to reinstalling it?
I reinstalled redhat-config-xfree86 with --force (I don't yet know of another way to reinstall a package that rpm thinks is already installed) When I run redhat-config-xfree86 I get: * ddcprobe returned bogus values: ID: None Name: None HorizSync: None VertSync: None Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/share/redhat-config-xfree86/xconf.py", line 403, in ? import gtk.glade ImportError: No module named glade I've been here before .. previously I reinstalled all the packages that included the words python and glade I did a rpm -Va > rpmsVa.txt and looked at that file, but I don't really know what to look for .. a search for error came up with nothing
Here is a list of things from rpm -Va that might be of interest (they are the only things that looked like error messages) missing /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so missing /var/www/html/usage missing /var/www/html/usage/msfree.png missing /var/www/html/usage/webalizer.png missing /usr/lib/libpq.so.2.0 missing /etc/rc.d/rc2.d/K10webmin missing /etc/rc.d/rc2.d/S99webmin missing /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/K10webmin missing /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/S99webmin missing /etc/rc.d/rc5.d/K10webmin missing /etc/rc.d/rc5.d/S99webmin
Can you just attach the rpm -Va output? There's a link on this page that says "Create a New Attachment", use that to attach the output. "man rpm" says how to interpret the letter codes by each file: S file Size differs M Mode differs (includes permissions and file type) 5 MD5 sum differs D Device major/minor number mis-match L readLink(2) path mis-match U User ownership differs G Group ownership differs T mTime differs 5 and S (md5sum or size differs) are bad news, for everything except configuration files. You're right that to reinstall an already-installed package you may need --force, I was concerned about broken dependencies.
Created attachment 91595 [details] output from rpm -Va
You probably already knew that there would be S and 5 listings in this output Could you help me figure out what packages I should reinstall to get the gnome gui (and gdm) working? I can work on the other non-essential packages myself later
I would describe your system as deeply hosed; in particular the C library has all the md5sums wrong. At this point there's definitely not a GNOME bug. There may be a bug in whatever caused the system to be hosed, but that would need to be tracked down. There's a good chance it's a bad hard drive or something. You could reinstall everything in the GNOME and X components (see /usr/share/comps/i386/comps.xml). Personally, I would not do that, because your C library and many other things are messed up, which might mean the reinstall won't even work right. I would suggest reinstalling from scratch after backing up your personal data files. I'd also get some hardware test tools like memtest86 or if you can find something for disks, and run those. For help with all this you should really go to the mailing lists, since it's more of a support issue than a bug.