Big X trouble!!!

[Void Main]

I don't believe you can just change the XF86Config back to using the stock drivers without also uninstalling the nVidia GLX drivers (originals are restored during the uninstall). Things may have changed but that's the way it used to be.

Did you happen to play with firewall settings around the time the problem began? It should be using local unix sockets so that shouldn't really cause a problem thought... Just thinking out loud... Also, what is the output of:

# netstat -a | grep 7100

In addition to the X socket having improper permissions, so could the xfs socket directory which is "/tmp/.font-unix". What do these commands show:

# ls -al /tmp/.font-unix
# ls -al /tmp/.X11-unix

[Ice9]

Did you happen to play with firewall settings around the time the problem began? It should be using local unix sockets so that shouldn't really cause a problem thought...

No I didn't touch the firewall settings

ps auxw | grep xfs
xfs appears to be running

# grep xfs /var/log/messages | tail -20
xfs started and listening on port 7100

however when I do
# /etc/init.d/xfs status
I still get xfs dead but pid file exists

So I did xfs -daemon and started x as root, which got me into gnome again.
When I switched to kde and wanted to restart x I lost the connection with the server.
So I tried to startx again, this time as user yc, got the splash screen and then:

mkdtemp : Private socket dir : Permission denied

Gonna check netstat and the other things now.

[Ice9]

I did a netstat and got nothing.
xfs loads during boot, I see a big green OK, however when I /etc/init.d/xfs status it's dead and I heve to start it with xfs -daemon.
When done I got this:

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# netstat -a | grep 7100

unix  2  [ACC]  Stream  Listening  2625  /tmp/.font-unix/fs7100


The rest gave me this:

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# ls -al /tmp/.font-unix
drwxrwxrwt  2  root  root  4096  NOV  4  14:51
drwxr-xr-x  25 root  root  4096  NOV  4  14:51
srwxrwxrwx  1  root  root  4096  NOV  4  14:51 fs7100

# ls -al /tmp/.X11-unix
drwxrwxrwt  2  root  root  4096  NOV  4  14:51
drwxr-xr-x  25 root  root  4096  NOV  4  14:51
srwxrwxrwx  1  root  root  4096  NOV  4  14:51 X0


[Void Main]

Aha!! Your /tmp dir is screwed. Do an:

# ls -lpd /tmp

It should show this:

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drwxrwxrwt   20 root     root         4096 Nov  4 12:11 /tmp/


You need to set permissions accordingly:

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# chown root:root /tmp
# chmod 1777 /tmp


[Ice9]

Void, you are simply amazing!!
How do you do it? Every time you can pinpoint the problem and solve it, well almost every time.

What caused /tmp to be screwed anyway?

It's funny because I read somewhere about troubles with X after rebooting and it said to
# chmod 1777 /tmp
# chown root:sys /tmp

I got ready to try that if nobody came up with a solution.
What would've been the difference?
You told me to chown root:root /tmp instead of root:sys /tmp.

[Void Main]

Red Hat uses root:root. Others may use root:sys. Technically it really doesn't make a difference one way or the other. The only thing I can think of is some distros/unices may use the "sys" group to signify that it is a system directory, just a guess.

It definitely was a permissions problem based on the error messages you quoted. X relies quite heavily on being able to write to socket files and the like in /tmp. When comparing your directory listing with mine it was quite obvious that your /tmp directory had incorrect permissions.

The only way I can think of for it to get changed is that you would have had to change it somewhere along the line, or that you deleted and recreated /tmp without realizing it has to have special permissions. Wish I had a better answer for that one. :)