Well, maybe that’s too strong a word, but my main work station (running Fedora Core 10) froze up today. I could move the cursor around on the screen, but nothing else. I ended up doing a hard reboot, after which it refused to boot, hanging after dragging the bar across the bottom of the screen. I’ve booted into rescue mode, but I have no idea how to fix it, because I don’t know what the problem is. I may trying to do a reinstall with the net install disk that I used to rescue, but I’m wondering if anyone has any ideas how to diagnose?

For those wondering, I’m posting from my laptop (which has its own problems, because the wireless isn’t working, and I have to find a place for it in my office where I can plug it in to ethernet).

[Update early afternoon]

I’m downloading Knoppix, because I’m having trouble with fsck from the rescue disk. It boots into level 3, though, so it may be an XWindows problem.

[Update a few minutes later]

No, it doesn’t go into level 3, it only boots single user.

[Early evening update]

Well, I backed up my data, and upgraded from Core 10 to Core 11. Whatever the problem was, the upgrade didn’t fix it. It acts just the same, except it says “Fedora 11” in the lower-right corner of the screen, instead of 10. It doesn’t complete the boot.

I guess I have to just do a clean installation, and recover from backup.

[Update a few minutes later]

D’oh!!!!!!!!!

I noticed when it shut down that it reported a bad line in /etc/fstab. I rescued, vi’d in, and noticed that I’d added a line to attempt to mount a remote drive, but had apparently screwed it up. This is the first time that I’d attempted a boot since I did that, weeks ago. So the screen freeze had nothing to do with the booting problem, other than it caused me to reboot. I deleted the line, and it looks like its coming up now. So I wasted a day on this. OTOH, I did do the upgrade, which I’d been meaning to anyway.

[Update a few minutes later]

Spoke too soon. It acted different, but it still won’t boot. At the end of the day, I’m still stuck with a white bar across the bottom of the screen. I’ll make one more attempt to look at the logs, and then just do a clean install of 11.

[Mid-evening update]

OK, I am officially infuriated.

I did a clean install of Core 11 over my previous Core 10. Everything went fine, except the friggin’ thing will not let me log in. I assigned a password for me (it didn’t ask for one for root), and when I use it, it just sits there. Forever. When I pull up a text window (ctrl-alt-F1) it asks for a password, then delays for a long time, then returns to a login prompt.

There are no words for how angry and frustrated I am…

Yeah, was busy today. We got up this morning and went to a range down in Pembroke to try out some 9mm guns that a friend had (the Glocks were nice), and then worked on the irrigation timer in the afternoon, changing out a switch and replacing a solenoid in the valve. For the first time in the five years that we’ve been here, we now have an automated system.

If anyone who knows CSS wants to make a major non-cash contribution to this blog, please tell me how to fix my stylesheet(s) templates to center the three columns under the header image.

I finally got fed up with “jack lee” today. The last-straw comment can be viewed here. He will no longer be endimmening us with his ignorance and stupidity, at least with that IP address.

Commenting here is not a right. It is a privilege, and one that he has been abusing (as he abused our intelligence) for years. No more.

The conference runs until Sunday morning, but I haven’t been home since last Wednesday, and I’m getting kind of burned out, and I’ve talked to pretty much everyone I hoped/wanted to. So I’ll probably be driving back down to Boca this evening. See you tomorrow.

But not back home, yet. I’m in Orlando, and may be here the rest of the week, for the Space Investment Summit tomorrow and the ISDC after that.

I’m going to be gone for the next week and a half (including some time at the ISDC) and am packing tonight and flying tomorrow (the next week will be in central Missouri). I’ll be doing the “have laptop, will travel” gig, though, because this is a working vacation, so I won’t be totally absent, but I’m unlikely to post much for the next day or so.

[Thursday morning update]

Travel went fine yesterday, but I didn’t get out the laptop until this morning. More posts anon.