[KLUG Members] Server Problem (long)

[Dirk Bartley]

On Fri, 2001-12-14 at 15:32, Daniel Szalay wrote:
> Over the last few months I've been building a home server using RH 7.1 using
> a mix of new and used parts. It's a 266Mhz PII with 384 meg of memory and a
> 32 meg ATI video board. The drive system consists of an Adaptec 29160
> controller with three Quantum 9.1 Gig SCSI's in a Raid 5 configuration. Also
> connected to this controller is a Seagate Scorpion-24 DDS-3 tape drive. I'm
> having a problem accessing this drive.
> 
> When I issue the command "mt -f /dev/st0 status" (or any mt command) I
> receive no response from the tape drive and my session hangs. I then have to
> start a new session and reboot to free up the locked one. I know the drive
> works because it's brand new, and prior to loading Linux I installed a copy
> of NT 4 to check the hardware (since I have more experience with NT than
> Linux), and it worked fine, backing up and restoring. I checked Seagate's
> web site and the drive is compatible with Linux. However, the installation
> book has several specific setups for the different flavors of Unix involving
> jumpers on the drive. No mention of Linux though.
> 
> What am I doing wrong?

Not sure here.  Have you checked the /var/log/dmesg file and the output
of the dmesg command to assure that the tape's device is /dev/st0.  It
sure seems that it would be to me, but I always double check.

I was having a problem with an scsi tape drive.  It was my not
understanding that the drive was doing hardware compression and that I
should not use software compression with it.  Other than that I'm not
sure if I can provide assistance here.

> 
> *** New Problem ***
> 
> Apparently through several rounds of hanging and rebooting, the file system
> developed errors and I had to run FSCK. It found and repaired LOTS of
> problems and I am now able to boot with no errors however, there is one
> snag: I cannot load Gnome. It fails with the error "** WARNING **: Unable to
> lock ICE authority file: /root/.ICEauthority.
> 
> Now what?

Occasionally I have had difficulties to get an X-server running after
using ctrl-alt-backspace to kill.  If I receive an error like this I
just delete the file or move it to a file of a different name and
re-execute startx.  So far this has worked for me.  In the past for me
it was files in the /tmp directory that removing would solve the
issues.  

It looks as though you are starting X as root.  In general it is better
to startx as a user and use an x-term to su to root for specific tasks.

Dirk