Click to See Complete Forum and Search --> : Is my installation hopelessly messed up?


Rakeswell
09-07-2001, 10:11 PM
It all started when Red Hat 7.1 would hang on logout. Because I had to reboot the machine using the power switch, I think this messed up *at least* the .mozilla files, whcih pretty much messed up the browser's functionality.

I managed to get the machine to logout after I removed a serial cable from /dev/ttyS0 (the "management" cable for the Cisco 678). But this was only temporary, as the hang on logout problem started up again.

This time I realized that were I to have logged in as root or any other user, there were no problems on logout.

So I logged in as root and copied some files I needed into a new diretory, deleted the "problem" account and all subdirectories, then added a new user account (with the same name), and finally copied those files I saved into the new account.

At this point, the new account works fine, except that the browser has crashed for no reason a few times, and when I try to configure the sawfish window manager, gnome configurator tells me:
[Sawfish isn't running]


None of the other accounts seem to have that problem.

The files I copied over from the old account were just some HTML files and some JAVA programs I'm working on.

I used "useradd" and "userdel" to set up and remove the accounts.

All my hardware is on the Rhat HCL

My questions are:

1) Is there something seriously flawed with my install of RH 7.1 -- can I possibly get this stuff to work in a stable, reliable way?

2)What sorts of things can cause an account/accounts to become so messed up?

3)I don't want to start a flame-war here, but which of the main distros is most known for its stability? I'm afraid Slackware and FreeBSD may be over my head just now...

Thanks all!

Nalle
09-20-2001, 06:21 AM
No, it doesn't look as if you've destroyed your install. It's allways (well, allmost) possible to fix the problem without a reinstall (if you are clever enough, that is).


I'm sorry to dissapoint you, but Slackware is in fact the distro that are most often mentioned as the most stable one.

Debian also got good reviews, but it is no easier to install - maybe even harder.


</nalle>