Cannot start KDE anymore

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#1

This is 11.1 i586 on a server. The machine has been working with no manual intervention for 2 months and I have put it into runlevel 3 because thats enough for it. Now I wanted to start KDE to do some administrative work and to my surprise it failed to start.

I was logged in as normal user on console F6 and typed ‘startx’ (as usual, this worked all the time before). The error message said that it could not move /var/log/Xorg.0.log to /var/log/Xorg.0.log.old

Owners for these files are root / users. What could be wrong here? And what do you suggest to fix it?

#2

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Is the root user logged on the X???

VampirD
No in elenath hîlar nan hâd gîn
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#3

Actually: no. No-one has started X or any graphical interface. But unfortunately I can’t exclude that in the past someone (who shouldn’t) has run ‘startx’ from the console as root.

I know that this can severely mess things up, but I have not the slightest idea where to look for any clues to verify this has happend (or not) or to fix it up.

#4

Login as root, and try “whereis Xorg”

Make sure the Xorg binaries (/usr/X11/bin and other locations provided) are owned by root and that their permissions are right.

This should most likely fix it.
Administrative tasks through KDE ? * laugh *

All you need is vi.

#5

One thing, why don’t you change from runlevel 3 to runlevel 5 when you need the graphical stuff?

#6

All you need is vi.

And how do you check an archive of webcam pics with vi ? rotfl!

But thank you for the hint. I will check those X11 permissions.

#7

Oops, I found:

server:/usr/bin # ll Xorg
-rwx--x--x 1 root root 1787640  2. Jul 2009  Xorg
server:/usr/bin # ll X11/Xorg
-rwx--x--x 1 root root 1787640  2. Jul 2009  X11/Xorg

but that sould be:

server:/usr/bin # ll Xorg
-rws--x--x 1 root root 1787640  2. Jul 2009  Xorg
server:/usr/bin # ll X11/Xorg
-rws--x--x 1 root root 1787640  2. Jul 2009  X11/Xorg

as I found by comparing to another clean install of 11.1 i586. Now I really wonder how this could be set wrong. Is there any security feature wiping out suid bits?

#8

fbida homepage

#9

Now this is becoming very strange, I would call it bizarre. After the corrections reported in post #7 startx worked again. I took the opportunity to update using yast and this brought an update to kernel 2.6.27.42 which required a reboot.

After the reboot KDE did not start (same error as before). I checked and found that /usr/bin/Xorg lacked again the suid bit; /usr/bin/X11/Xorg was ok. What’s going on here? What is changing the permissions for /usr/bin/Xorg which requires root privileges to do?