I've gotten myself into one hell of a mess, and i'm dumbfounded on how to fix it. Last night, I configured my COL-3.1.1 box to provide remote X logins using kdm, as per these instructions: http://sxs.sourceforge.net/sxs/remotexkdm.html
Everything was working perfectly. So, i wake up this morning, and boot up this same box, to come upon utter chaos. The first sign something wasn't right was when i tried to login using kdm), and as soon as i hit enterafter typing my password, a little error window appears to state "System bootup in progress - please wait". I did a bit of research, and determined that this occurs when there is a /etc/nologin file (although i couldn't figure out why such a file was created). So, i found both /etc/nologin (and its contents were nothing but the error that i just mentioned), and /etc/ nologin.boot (whic h had the same contents as nologin). I deleted both, and was able to login as a normal user (root is apparently not effected by these files). At this point, i'm just thinking that this is some strange artifact from the remote X config, and that i'm good to go. No dice. I went ahead to dial into my ISP (my *only* connection to the internet is via a 56k modem) using the same PPP script i've been using for over a year, and i wait, and wait, and finally i start to suspect something is wrong, as ppp0 isn't coming up. So i tail the messages expecting to see the normal pppd and chat logging info, with perhaps some stupid 'no carrier' error (which happens occasionally with my ISP), but instead i see *NOTHING*. Its doing the normal syslog stuff, but there's nothing from pppd, as if its never ran at all. So, i try to run the ppp dialup script from the command line (i normally use a tiny Tcl/Tk app to start & stop the dialup, since my wife isn't all that enthused about using the command line), and it exits immediately, with no errors or feedback whatsoever. Its as if pppd doesn't even work. Now i'm starting to get very worried. I'm thinking surely a remote X setup can't break ppp, but since i'm desperate, i decide to back out of the entire remote X configuration. I switch to the first virtual console, and log in as root, to change to runlevel 3, and that's when i notice that the /etc/issue banner that normally appears is different. Its advertising the default "Caldera OpenLinux 3.1.1" rather than the customized message that I had put there oh so long ago. I'm wondering how the hell did that get changed? But i continue, and go to change the default runlevel 5 behavior in /etc/inittab back to what it was, pre-remote-X-setup, only to my horror, it already looks as if it has been changed. Its the same as it was before i changed it last night. This makes absolutely no sense, because if i glance over to the client that is supposed to be receiving the remote X, it is! How can this be possible? So i'm not at all sure what's going on, and i think, i'm just going to reboot, and everything will be ok (stupid windoze mentality). As root, i do a "shutdown -r now", and instead of it doing its normal runlevel 6 stuff, it dumps me to the ominous "Hit Control-D to reboot, or enter root password for maintenance mode" message. I'm thinking, WTF?? For starters, the file system definitely doesn't need a fsck, because its not ext2/3, its XFS. ALso, i now i didn't shutdown improperly, because the box has been up for the past hour while i frantically tried to figure out what was going on. If i type the root password, it dumped me back to a root shell prompt. Then, no matter what i type, it give me that same "Control-D" error. If i hit COntrol-D, i get another Control-D error. So, i hit control-alt-del, and it spontaneously reboots. After it came back up, it was basically the same routine all over again, with the nologin files, and ppp being in a coma. I did figure out that its does the Control-D thing when i issue a reboot, but not if i tell it to just halt at the end of a shutdown. I am completely & utterly confused at this point. THe only other change that I made last night (as root) was to install the safe new version of OpenSSH. I've started to consider the possibility that my box was compromised, but if that did happen, i must have either been asleep at the wheel, or they were damn good. I monitor all of my logs on a very regular basis, i've locked down or turned off all services that i don't use or need, and i've had IP Filter setup for quite some time. The only external services that i've even offered were sshd, and the remote X that i setup last night. Hopefully someone can shed some light on what is going on here. ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Lonni J. Friedman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Linux Step-by-step help: http://netllama.ipfox.com . __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Try FREE Yahoo! Mail - the world's greatest free email! http://mail.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________________ Linux-users mailing list - http://linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Archives,and Digests are located at the above URL.
