On Tue Oct 2 1:01 , DJA <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> sent: >Ralph Shumaker wrote: >> My friend's PC insisted on root password for maintenance when booting up >> (or press a key to continue). Fortunately, my friend sometimes pays >> attention to warnings. >> >> I supplied root password. >> mount worked. >> df did not. >> man fsck did not work. >> fsck did not give me a list of options. It just took off running. >> >> I manually hit Enter (to answer "yes") to a *lot* of things. It only >> found problems on the partition containing /usr (which is one slice of >> the only HDD in the system). There are several directories and *many* >> files now in /usr/lost+found. >> >> gnome won't load, tho kde seems ok. Firefox won't launch because it >> can't find the executable. Thunderbird takes a long time before >> silently giving up. yum remove firefox won't remove it. >> >> I'm trying to remember any other problems, but that covers most of it. >> >> I'm going back there sometime tomorrow. Is the HDD unreliable? >> Fortunately, she doesn't care about much of the data. > >As I've said before, I've gone down this road before, because of >basically the exact same symptoms - only to find that the actual problem >was not the HDD, but a faulty motherboard (failed to read RAM properly) >or RAM. I learned my lesson by further corrupting the HDD through having >fsck "fix" or delete perfectly good data. > >It's seldom wise to jump to conclusions based on a few ambiguous >symptoms, and risk trashing your data without first doing some >fundamental diagnostics. Bad RAM, Power Supplies, and even keyboards >(rare now I think) can also cause drive errors. > >The first component to be tested should *always* be the RAM. People tend >to bypass that step simply because it takes so long to run a thorough >test (with memtest386 or friends) and they're impatient to get things >working again. If RAM fails, don't assume it's bad. Test it in another >box. If RAM passes, then move on to other components. If you get to the >point you're certain it's the HDD, then test it in another box (with a >real drive diagnostics program) just to make sure.
I "tend to bypass that step simply because" I believe the PC telling me that there is a problem on the HDD. I need to train myself to be more suspicious and be slow to believe anything it tells me. I will find my Knoppix DVD (or get another one from Carl) and run the memtest86 on it. Thanks for reminding me to check the system first. Unfortunately, I've already fsck'd up the files on the HDD. I'm going to have to reinstall fc7. (I'd rather reinstall than pull my hair trying to fix the damage done.) > >Remember, lots of things must work correctly and in unison before that >data gets read from, or written to, the drive. It only takes one bad bit >to corrupt data. That corruption can occur anywhere. With most of the >guts of the computer now residing in just a few monolithic modules >welded to the motherboard, it's getting harder and harder to pin down >the source. > >Or take the "Shoot first and call anything you hit the target" path. >Your data, your choice. I am humbled, great guru. Thank you for explaining my humiliation. ;) > > >> She uses it mainly for internet and printing. And it is running >> noticeably slower with fc7 than it was with fc4. I think (like mine) it >> is hitting swap. What are the names of the window managers that take >> very little overhead? > >It seems 1 Gig of RAM is now the minimum which makes Fedora with a GUI >really happy. Fortunately, RAM is a cheap drug. > >I played with some other window managers on some rather old and anemic >laptops, and while they were lighter weight in terms of complexity, >flexibility, configurability, and eye-candy, a seat-of-the-pants measure >of performance found them so little better than KDE or Gnome there was >really no point using them other than aesthetics. > > >> I'm probably going to get a newer PC for myself. But she doesn't care >> about the PC much beyond surfing the internet and probably won't want to >> spend the money. She probably won't hesitate to spend it if I make the >> case for it. But for her needs, just reducing the overhead will >> probably suffice. > >Note that Fedora 7 now installs and sets the Beagle desktop search >engine to run at startup. It can really soak bandwidth on a marginal >system. You can also get a significant performance boost by knocking >down video color depth to 16 bits. Unless you're doing serious graphics >or 3D gaming, your eyes won't notice. What is this Beagle stuff? What's it do? How do I kill it? What bad things would ensue? I'll try the 16 bit thing. Thanks. ---- Msg sent via CWNet - http://www.cwnet.com/ -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
