Hi John,
I can understand your frustration. Since you haven't given details on how you installed RedHat or XFree, I can only suggest possible options. You will need to determine where you go from here based on the specifics of your installation.
The options I see are:
1. reinstall XFree from the RedHat distribution 2. fix the current XFree installation 3. reinstall linux from the RedHat distribution
John Sullivan wrote:
I've just tried to update XFree86 and have consequently overwritten the old XFree86 which actually worked.
You didn't say how you installed RedHat (which procedure you used), nor how you updated XFree. However, assuming you installed RedHat using RPMs, your simplest approach may well be to re-install XFree from the distribution RPMs. For your own information, you can read up on rpm using the man command: man rpm
RPM (RedHat Package Manager) can install a set of multiple components in a single "transaction", resolving all dependencies as it goes.
You can see which XFree RPMs you already have installed with the command: rpm -q -a | grep Xfree
**Note that you may well have overwritten the actual contents (libraries and executables) of these packages when you updated XFree.
To re-install XFree only, a command something like the following should work for you: rpm -Uvh `rpm -q -a | grep XFree`
**Note the second part of that command (rpm -q -a | grep XFree) is enclosed in *backquotes*, *not* single-quotes. (The backquote key is usually to the left of the '1' numeric key at the top-left of the keyboard.)
You will almost certainly have to add the '--force' option to the UVh part: rpm -Uvh --force `rpm -q -a | grep Xfree`
You will probably also want to use the '--test' option initially, to see what is going to happen without actually changing things:
rpm -Uvh --test --force `rpm -q -a | grep XFree`
Now I can get to the login screen but whatever session I log in as it shows me a nice console window and a failsafe screen. but there could be numerous alternatives to resolve the problem and I don't know what they are.
From the information you've provided I have no idea either. The two logs you should look in are:
/var/log/XFree86.0.log
and
/var/log/messages
If I remove Linux and start again i would be screwed because
a) I've downloaded lots of stuff and I would lose it
There's no reason you would lose your data. If you choose a custom upgrade/installation, and choose to manually partition the disk, you can control which partitions are reformatted and which ones are not. If you want to do a clean installation, then you just need to ensure that you don't reformat a partition that contains user data. If you have separate partitions for OS data and user data, this is easy. For example, if '/home' is a separate partition, then you can allow the installation to re-format the partitions containing the system directories '/', '/boot', '/usr', '/var', but not '/home'. The temporary directory '/tmp' should not contain any data you wish to keep permanently, so you should always assume it is safe to allow '/tmp' to be erased. If you have put important data into /tmp, then you should move it before linux clean up and deletes it automatically.
If your partitioning combines OS and user data, *and* you wish to re-format that/those partitions, then you will need to backup your user data first. The command 'tar' does a good job of this, and can be easily piped over the network to a second machine if there is not enough room on your machine for both the data and a (compressed) copy of it. Compression will typically result in a file 2/3 the size of the original data, assuming there are a significant number of files that don't compress very well such as tar and zip files typical of downloads.
The command 'man tar' will tell you about tar.
The command: tar cvjf backup.tz2 <whatever-you-want-backed-up> will create a single compressed backup file called 'backup.tz2' containing whatever you told it.
Eg: tar cvjf backup.tz2 /home
would backup the entire '/home' directory tree.
You can then restore that file with the command
tar xvjf backup.tz2
**Note: you will need to use the 'cd' command to ensure that the restore is put into the correct directory. To restore a top-level directory such as '/home', you should first 'cd' to '/', eg: cd /
b) it would have wasted my time when I need it for University and I'd have to install it again and run updates again - not prepared to do that c)
I can understand the desire to waste as little time as possible redoing things you've already done. This comment implies to me you would prefer the first option of re-installing XFree.
it would ruin my master boot record stored on my windows drive and I would consequently lose windows
Not in my experience. However, given that you don't want to re-install linux, I see no point in pursuing this further.
I've got my Nvidia drivers but it throws them out now so obviously they are not the problem
Maybe, maybe not... If XFree is "throwing them out", then that *may* be an indication to the root of your problem. If you look in the log files listed above, you should get a clearer idea of what problem is causing XFree to fail.
as they installed perfectly in the old version of XFree86.
Which raises an interesting question: How is the new XFree configured? Is it using default config files that came with the installation; is it using the exact same files from the previous installation; did you re-run the configuration tools; or something else?
Hope this helps.
Cheers! Nik _______________________________________________ XFree86 mailing list XFree86@XFree86.Org http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xfree86
