On 15/11/99 Phao Chel wrote:
>I am newbie to linux (also I don't know much of
>system's related stuff about unix in general). I had
>installed redhat 6.0 sometime back but recently it had
>started to give me some problems. Like when I try to
>logout by clicking "logout" it doesn't let me.
>"Someone" told me that linux stores some
>configurations files to restore your system back to
>its state of last login when you re-login and
>sometimes this restoration takes a long time.
they may have been talking about session handing things like
gnome-session, gnome desktop envoronment does indeed take a long time
to start up partly because of this, you want speed, use Windowmaker :)
>I don't
>know how much of that is true (or even if I said it
>correct) but I started to delete some .conf files in
>the /etc directory (by switching as root)
BAD don't do this, for one thing files in /etc cannot be modified by
anything you run under your normal account, this is not NT where
applications can do stuff you can't, everything outside of
/home/yourusername is read only to you and cannot change by your
session. furthermore un*x is very orderly about the filesystem and
where things go, user files and configuration is not scattered about
randomly all over the filesystem like in win* your accounts
configuration files and session stuff is in your home directory and
no where else adn affect no one else. thus to modify your accounts
environment or configuration you do NOT need the root account.
in fact i recommend doing a lot of reading and research on what you
want to do before even switching to the root account at all, root is
only needed for global system administration activity not normal use
or alteration of your personal account's environment. and certainly
do not do anything destructive as root unless you REALLY know what
you are doing first. also do not use root when tired or fatigued :)
do not drink and root etc etc.
> it worked
>fine. But this time when I was trying to do the same
>(delete some .conf files) I actually deleted all
>*.conf files in the /etc directory and now I am not
>able to login to my system as root or any other user.
>Seems like I deleted the password file or something??
probably not the passwd files as they are called /etc/passwd adn
/etc/group and (if shadow is in use) /etc/shadow and /etc/gshadow
additionally
there are however (obviously) rather important things in /etc
restoring all of them would be alot of work even for the experienced
un*x / GNU/Linux user so you may just be better off reinstalling your
distribution, if you have not had it installed long this is not too
big a deal, and if you created a seperate partition for /home then
you can do it without losing any of your personal files.
>Can someone suggest me what has happened and how grave
>a situation am I in. Any solutions to the problems
>will be really-really appreciated.
its not good, not the worst you could have done, but not good and I
do not think there is a very quick and fast fix for this...
Best Regards,
Ethan Benson
To obtain my PGP key: http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/pgp/
