X won't start (probably simple)

[sasKuatch]

Hello, to make a long story short, I ended up deleting my /tmp directory, don't ask. X worked fine, but after rebooting a few times, no dice. As a matter of fact, no other programs would work in X, not even xterm. At first, it told me it couldn't find some /tmp/.X01-xfreelck or something lock file, but now it just says it can't connect to server :0 or something similar. It simply tries to start X for about a dozen times with the screen blinking on and off every second or so and eventually gives me an error in an ncurses display.

Can anybody help me fix this please?

Rob.

[madcompnerd]

Do you have a /tmp directory now?
cd /
mkdir tmp
chmod 777 tmp

[palinux]

chmod 1777 /tmp

Don't forget to set the sticky bit !!

[madcompnerd]

oops :)

[JGooner]

do you get anything if you try
xinit /usr/X11R6/bin/xedit
from a login shell? Or maybe try
startx -- :1

(Hope this suggestion is not a red herring...)

Regards
JG

[sasKuatch]

Oh, I forgot the permisions. That's probably it; i'll have to set them when I get home. I never thought of that.

[sasKuatch]

Yes, the permissions were the problem *bowing humbly* Thank You.

What exactly does that sticky bit do?

[scott_R]

it allows anyone to write to the directory, but only control files that are their own. It allows you to share that directory with other users and processes, without allowing you to erase files you aren't supposed to.

[sasKuatch]

Wow, that's a really cool feature, I wanna see windoze do that:p