[Nottingham] ironic Xserver failure

[Robert Postill]

David Wolfson wrote:
Agreed. Trouble is it does seem to happen when running custom software. 
worthy of later investigation...

>> <>Seeing as you're running Red Hat, find the relevant rpms. 
>
Red Hat eh?  Regarding my earlier comments there should be a friendly 
(anaconda maybe?) X configuration utility you can use.

>> <>So presumably I need XFree86-4.3.0-2 So I tried:
>
Don't bank on it, you may find the whole shebang has to come out.  
However a google search brought me this gem, use
rpm -V package_name_to_verify to find out if something's missing (the 
article I found was: http://www.sans.org/y2k/RPM.htm).  Wrap that in a 
bash script with your output from the query and you're being a proper 
geek :) 

>> <>with the response:
>> error: open of XFree86-4.3.0-2.90.55.i386.rpm failed: No such file or 
>> directory
>> each time.
>>
>> I've got the rpm man pages up, but does anyone know of an 'idiots 
>> guide to..'?
>
Nothing springs straight to mind, check the RedHat manual pages (they're 
still on the site I believe) and use google.

>> <>Good news is that yes, I belive I did and all! I'll try and get the 
>> rellavent log files off at some point, but I'm trying to fit this in 
>> around rheometry of silicone elastomers, so it may not be today!
>
"rheometry of silicone elastomers" - sounds almost as gripping as 
"session migration in a duff JavaScript app" :)  Obviously, you're a 
full time sysadmin, but do try and post your /var/log/messages it will 
most likely contain some of your answers.

>> <>PS first thing when I get this back is a disc with /var, /etc and 
>> ony other suggestions...
>
I take you mean a new disc, good plan.  Be careful not to overdo it, 
/boot, root (/), /home, /var and possibly /opt will see you right.  If 
you have too many you'll end up making lots of logical partitions and 
that just looks ugly.

Robert.