Roger wrote: > Many thanks for all your suggestions. I think I have somehow damaged > the Linux installation beyond my ability to repair it and will have to > reinstall it. I hate it when this happens. > > I did find one other clue - I get different logout menus on this PC > and my server PC. Both are Mandrake 8.1 and both were installed with > only the KDE gui. On this (working) version, when I click on the > logout icon, I get a popup messagebox that says "End KDE session?" > with a logout/halt/reboot radio button and OK & Cancel buttons. This > PC always obeys, and will shutdown from this messagebox, a telnet > session, and a remote vnc session. > > On the server PC (with my monitor, keyboard, and mouse connected) I > get a messagebox that says "End KDE session?", but it has only the OK > and Cancel buttons. If I click OK, several screen flashes later I get > a welcome login screen which has a shutdown... button. Clicking the > shutdown... button yields another messagebox which has the reboot/halt > options. Selecting halt or reboot here results in a successful halt > or reboot. A vnc session to this PC never sees the second login > messagebox as the screen goes black after clicking OK to logout. A > telnet session shutdown command (with every combination of -h, -r, -f) > issues the broadcast, but the system continues running. > I'm not sure what I did to make this difference in the logout > messagebox -- I was did turn off some system services I didn't think I > needed, and I did shut off the automatic logon. > > Even worse, after one of my brutal power downs of the running server, > I can no longer telnet into the server. On top of that, with the > monitor, keyboard, mouse attached, my normal logon ID seems to be > hosed and I can no longer view most of the disk directories. Looking > at the /root view, many of the branches like /etc, /usr, /home say > "Locked Directory". If I log in as root, the directory structure > appears normal to me, although a suspicious number of /etc > configuration files were changed at 8:54 PM last night. And telnet is > no longer listed in the "system services" as it is on my non-server > PC. I guess I was too fast with the chmod, chown, and user > configuration tools last night. > > I guess I will give it one more try and create a new user. If that > doesn't do the trick I will reinstall Mandrake 8.1. Thanks for all > your input. > > Roger > > > > > _________________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com > > > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? >Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com > Sounds like you configured each computer with different security levels. On top of that, the computer/server sounds like it is "hosed" because linuxconf made some changes. I recommend editing everything through linuxconf before totally giving up and reinstalling your system. I know that you are trying to work with the problem and saving a reinstallation as a last result, otherwise you wouldn't have posted to this site. Another "sound" that I hear about your system is that it sounds like your filesystem could use a fsck or reiserfschk.HTH
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