On Sun, 26 Aug 2007 19:29:51 -0400, Stuart Miller wrote:

> I am running 2006 (magazine dvd edition) on a 950 with 196m memory
> It has been stable up until the last power failure here

Sounds like the filesystem has been corrupted. If I remember correctly,
2006 wouldn't run the filesystem check after an unclean shutdown,
unless you were there to press the y key. Try running
"shutdown -F", or "shutdown -Fr", to force fsck to try again.

Without a ups, or even just for some extra safety, I strongly suggest using
"hdparm -W 0 /dev/hda", to turn off hard drive write caching. With unstable power, or software, having the drive caching the writes, is an unnecessary
risk. Put one hdparm command in /etc/rc.d/rc.local, for each hard drive.
It does reduce performance, however, I only notice the difference, when
copying large files, such as iso images.

Depending on how good you are at troubleshooting, it may be easiest, to
back up your actual data, and reinstall. I assume you don't have a full
system backup, to recover with.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

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David W. Hodgins wrote:
> Without a ups, or even just for some extra safety, I strongly suggest using
> "hdparm -W 0 /dev/hda", to turn off hard drive write caching. With
> unstable power, or software, having the drive caching the writes, is an
unnecessary
> risk. Put one hdparm command in /etc/rc.d/rc.local, for each hard drive.
> It does reduce performance, however, I only notice the difference, when
> copying large files, such as iso images.
>
> Depending on how good you are at troubleshooting, it may be easiest, to
> back up your actual data, and reinstall. I assume you don't have a full
> system backup, to recover with.

If the corruption affected only KDE configuration files, in your home
directory
mv .kde .oldkde
and see if KDE starts up ok. Alternatively, if you have another
user (or another user name) on the system, try logging in as that
user and see if KDE works. You might go as far as creating a new
user to determine whether it is a system problem or just a KDE
problem.

Cheers!

jim b.

--
UNIX is not user-unfriendly; it merely
expects users to be computer-friendly.

"Jim Beard" wrote in message
news:XFoAi.3273$Ay3.2967@trndny02...
> David W. Hodgins wrote:
>> Without a ups, or even just for some extra safety, I strongly suggest
>> using
>> "hdparm -W 0 /dev/hda", to turn off hard drive write caching. With
>> unstable power, or software, having the drive caching the writes, is an
> unnecessary
>> risk. Put one hdparm command in /etc/rc.d/rc.local, for each hard drive.
>> It does reduce performance, however, I only notice the difference, when
>> copying large files, such as iso images.
>>
>> Depending on how good you are at troubleshooting, it may be easiest, to
>> back up your actual data, and reinstall. I assume you don't have a full
>> system backup, to recover with.
>
> If the corruption affected only KDE configuration files, in your home
> directory
> mv .kde .oldkde
> and see if KDE starts up ok. Alternatively, if you have another
> user (or another user name) on the system, try logging in as that
> user and see if KDE works. You might go as far as creating a new
> user to determine whether it is a system problem or just a KDE
> problem.
>
> Cheers!
>
> jim b.
>
> --
> UNIX is not user-unfriendly; it merely
> expects users to be computer-friendly.

Two updates

- this applies to any user, even root logging into KDE

- in an Ice session, brigning up konqueror caused the same abnormal exit

I will try the filecheck umount then e3fsck on each partition

As for the write caching, I will look into that asap.
This is a hobby webserver, everything backed up, and nothing critical on the
system. Performance is not an issue, as it is running about 2% utilization.

Stuart Miller wrote:

>
> "Jim Beard" wrote in message
> news:XFoAi.3273$Ay3.2967@trndny02...
>> David W. Hodgins wrote:
>>> Without a ups, or even just for some extra safety, I strongly suggest
>>> using
>>> "hdparm -W 0 /dev/hda", to turn off hard drive write caching. With
>>> unstable power, or software, having the drive caching the writes, is an
>> unnecessary
>>> risk. Put one hdparm command in /etc/rc.d/rc.local, for each hard
>>> drive. It does reduce performance, however, I only notice the
>>> difference, when copying large files, such as iso images.
>>>
>>> Depending on how good you are at troubleshooting, it may be easiest, to
>>> back up your actual data, and reinstall. I assume you don't have a full
>>> system backup, to recover with.
>>
>> If the corruption affected only KDE configuration files, in your home
>> directory
>> mv .kde .oldkde
>> and see if KDE starts up ok. Alternatively, if you have another
>> user (or another user name) on the system, try logging in as that
>> user and see if KDE works. You might go as far as creating a new
>> user to determine whether it is a system problem or just a KDE
>> problem.
>>
>> Cheers!
>>
>> jim b.
>>
>> --
>> UNIX is not user-unfriendly; it merely
>> expects users to be computer-friendly.
>
> Two updates
>
> - this applies to any user, even root logging into KDE
>
> - in an Ice session, brigning up konqueror caused the same abnormal exit
>
> I will try the filecheck umount then e3fsck on each partition
>
> As for the write caching, I will look into that asap.
> This is a hobby webserver, everything backed up, and nothing critical on
> the system. Performance is not an issue, as it is running about 2%
> utilization.

i had a problem for the first time a few weeks ago and it seemed my
hard drive had a corrupt file on it i believe.

i just put in the mandriva cd and clicked on the rescue button, rebooted and
all is well.



--
Love is all u need.

"Stuart Miller" wrote in message
news:P1oAi.95168$fJ5.51480@pd7urf1no...
>I am running 2006 (magazine dvd edition) on a 950 with 196m memory
> It has been stable up until the last power failure here
>
> Now-
> lilo woks fine
> verbose start up shows no problems
> mandriva login menu is fine
> I forgot to install gnome, I have IceWm, KDE and Failsafe
> when I log into KDE as any valid user
> startup splash appears, session starts
> sometimes the previous session is re-established
> screen goes black
> mandriva login appears again
> user is not logged in
>
> Log in to Ice appears to work just fine, but I don't know my way around it
> yet.
>
> I know for certain that I have not changed any kde settings.
>
> Can someone point me to a solution?
>
> Thanks
>
> Stuart
>
>
>
I ran the file system checks, they show everything is ok
I ran the maxtor diagnostics, they show drive is fine
I reinstalled 2006, but messed up the install so can't get to kde

Rather than risk anything more, I installed 2006 on a brand new 250 gig
drive.
KDE now does exactly the same thing - starts then exits back to the login
prompt

So, this sounds a lot like a hardware problem.
The question is, motherboard or video card?
video is matrox G4+M4A32DG
mb is Gigabyte A 7 ZXE

Any ideas?

I'm going to try a different video card - I found a Radeon RV100 and a
Gforce 2 MX, both 32 meg.
Is one any better for a workstation environment?

Stuart