giza: Giza White Mage (Default)
[personal profile] giza
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!
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giza: Giza White Mage (Default)
Douglas Muth

April 2012

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