Computer problems, and Friday Five

So, I got an interesting surprise on my computer this morning. I walked by the machine and instead of the usual screensaver, I saw an error about not being able to load a library. So I logged in and tried to restart the screensaver, but was unable to do so, as X appeared to be unstable. Next step was to kill X. When I tried to restart the X server, I saw an error to the effect of:

/usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6: Unable to load symbol:

What was really odd was that that was it, there was no specific error as to what the problem was. I checked the file, and it's really there (or rather, since it's a symlink, the file that it points to is there). I checked /var/log and didn't see anything indicating disk problems. It's really bizarre.

When I get back home tonight, after making a backup, I'll probably try restarting the machine (just in case it is anything kernel-related) and if that doesn't work, I'll try running rpm --verify XFree86-libs to see if there has been any file corruption. If that is unable to resolve the problem, then the only other option I have would be to reinstall RedHat, which would really really suck, because I'd have to reload a lot of stuff. Here's hoping it doesn't come down to that!

Anyway, here's my Friday Five:

1. What was the last song you heard?

Uh, the one I'm listening to right now: Turrican Medley.

2. What were the last two movies you saw?

The Triplets of Belleville and The Game. Saw 'em both last week.

3. What were the last three things you purchased?

It's been a few days since I bought much of anything, actually. A few days ago I purchased some books from Amazon on C programming. I also purchased various groceries the other night.

4. What four things do you need to do this weekend?

FIX MY COMPUTER, try to get tinyDNS working, do some mailserver maintenance, and read through some random computer manuals of mine. Let's hear it for geeky hobbies!

5. Who are the last five people you talked to?

In real life or online? Assuming that either is valid, in reverse order it would be: justincheetah, hunterkitty, Johnny in the office, the customer service person at the Saturn Dealership, and the receptionist there.

Man, today at work is gonna suck. I'm gonna be all nervous about trying to get my computer working tonight. I really gotta look into getting an iBook...

Random Thought

Courtesy of Wanda the Fish:

Do not despair of life. You have no doubt force enough to overcome your
obstacles. Think of the fox prowling through wood and field in a winter night
for something to satisfy his hunger. Notwithstanding cold and hounds and
traps, his race survives. I do not believe any of them ever committed suicide.

-- Henry David Thoreau

More happy fun computer problems!

Well, my computer problem turned out to be easily solvable, yet it revealed new problems. First, I got the exact error, it was:

xauth: error in loading shared libraries: /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6: undefined symbol:

I then ran rpm --verify XFree86-lib and lo and behold, the file failed its MD5 check. So I did a backup, just to be safe, and rebooted. After rebooting, the file appeared okay. I am gussing that something got corrupted in memory, specifically the disk cache, and that caused the problem I was experiencing. Whether it's a kernel bug or a memory issue remains to be seen.

While I had my PC on the operating table, I figured I would try installing Red Hat 9.0, as a step up from Red Hat 6.0. Unfortunately, that didn't go off as planned either. When I tried to boot from the RH 9 CD, I got Boot from ATAPI CD-ROM: Failure .... It also did the same thing for a FreeBSD bootable CD and my original RH 6.1 CD. While the RH 9 and FreeBSD CDs are burned ones (but boot on other machines), my RH 6.1 CD is an official RedHat copy. Furthermore, I know it's bootable, because I booted from it 4 years ago when I first set up this machine of mine. I also also able to reproduce the problem with no other devices attached to the IDE bus, so it doesn't appear to be a master/slave issue. Also, I can read from all 3 of the CDs just fine after the OS has loaded.

At this point, my options are:

1) Swap in a new CD-ROM drive and see what happens. I might try this. If it's bootable, then great.

2) If #1 works, I'll run out and get a CD-R drive. Once I upgrade to RedHat 9.0, it should have no problems using the CD-R for writing, and I'll be able to use it for writing CDs as backups.

3) If #1 or #2 don't work, then I think I will move up my plans of getting an iBook. I'm getting kinda tired of playing around with relatively "stupid" PC hardware. I just want something that works.

Ah well, at least I was productive this evening. I did some vacuuming and other cleaning around the apartment, as well as playing tetris with the servers and UPSes in my dining room, thus freeing up a lot of space there. More info on the servers (and how you can get one of your VERY OWN) to come in a future post.

Stay pronky!