Re: HELP: FATAL SERVER ERROR
In article <199802152004.PAA10900@hme1-1.pop3.sprint.ca>,
Albert Hurd <ahurd@sprint.ca> wrote:
>This newbie would like some help with the following problem:
Okay. Follow closely.
>It began with a cd to /tmp
All right so far.
>and then a rm -r /tmp.
You must have been root at this time? /tmp is pretty much necessary for
the system to operate. The "rm -r" command means "remove the following
directory and everything inside it". That's what killed your system.
>I then wanted to cd ~ but
You can just say "cd". If you don't specify where you want to go, cd
will take you to your home directory by default.
>did cd ` byy mistake.
>This replaced the usual prompt $ by >.
The ">" prompt is bash's way of asking you for more input to complete
the command. Back-quotes need to come in pairs in bash commands, so
bash assumed your command was not finished, and asked you for more.
In that situation, just press CONTROL-C to abort the command and get
your usual prompt back.
>I then tried to get a new xterm window by clicking the afterstep icon.
>Nothing happened.
Since you'd zapped /tmp, which is where the X server keeps its "socket"
(the connection point for new X programs which want to display on your
screen), the new xterm you started could not connect to that socket,
and so could not display itself on your screen, instead bombing out
without being able to tell you what was happening.
>I then rebooted and got the the following when I tried startx:
>
> Fatal server error:
> Could not create lock file in /tmp/.tX-lock
That was because /tmp didn't exist!
Incidentally, rebooting was rather a drastic measure. You should have
first tried CONTROL-ALT-BACKSPACE to abort your X session, and then run
startx again. Only, in this case, that would have failed, too.
>Could anyone tell me what happened
Hope this helped.
>and how to recover. Thanhs so much.
As Joey said, become root and say
mkdir /tmp; chmod 1777 /tmp
Make sure you do not use your computer as root as a matter of course;
use a different user ID for day-to-day usage, and become root only when
necessary to do system administration. That will help avoid accidents
like the one you described.
--
Charles Briscoe-Smith
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