Help - Mandriva won't boot!

system · December 12, 2006, 7:07pm

I’m dual-booting Mandriva 2006 and Ubuntu. I went to boot over into Mandriva from Ubuntu, but got an error message saying that there is an error with KDE and I cant get past that initial splash screen.

I had made a full system backup of Mandriva and have the backup.tgz file on the Mandriva partition so that I can (supposedly) do a full restore.

However, I don’t know how to go about doing a restore. I’m assuming that I have to get to the command line to initiate the backup restore file using the command: tar xvpzf backup.tgz -C /

I booted into ‘failsafe’ mode in Mandriva, but could not find a way to the command line. Can anyone help/advise please?

Cheers,

David.

Anti-Trend · December 12, 2006, 7:10pm

I don’t understand; you boot in failsafe mode but can’t find a way to the command line?

system · December 12, 2006, 7:31pm

I’ll go back in failsafe. I’m afraid this is all new to me. I’ll see if I can get to a prompt.

Here’s the full error message btw:

There was an error setting up inter-process communications for KDE. The message returned by the system was:

Could not read network connection list:

/home/david.DCOPserver_localhost_0

Please check that the “dcopserver” program is running.

(I click OK, then I get):

Will not save configuration:

Configuration file “Home/david.kde/share/config/ksplashrc” not writable.

Configuration file “home/david.kde/share/config/kdeglobals” not writable.

Please contact your system administrator - OK

Anti-Trend · December 12, 2006, 7:36pm

It looks like somehow the privileges and/or ownership on your /home directory got messed up. [ot]Were we tinkering? :P[/ot] You need to own your /home/$USER directory and all its contents (replace $USER with your username in Linux), and you need to have R/W rights as well. Let me know if you need help with the specifics.

system · December 12, 2006, 8:25pm

Hello, AT.

Gulp!! Yes, I was tinkering over in Ubuntu. I’d changed permissions and altered Kate over in Ubuntu to give me read & write access to files on my Mandriva partition - it worked a treat! However, I must have screwed things up (bloddy newbie!).

However, let’s cut to the chase. I got to the command line in Mandriva and manage to fully restore the whole system with the backup.tgz file I had made. Yipeeee! I was feeling quiet pround of myself - but the feeling didn’t last long!

Mandriva boots-up fine and everything appears to work. Great I thought. However, when I hit restart, Mandriva starts to close down, but freezes (blue screen with “X” in the centre. The only alternative that I have is to re-boot.

Also, when now in Mandriva, I get the following error message in the attached screenshot. Any help would be greatly appreciated as I have not got a clue how to fix the problem.

David.

EDIT: Long story cut short:

Have fully sorted Mandriva out now, but unfortunately, I seem to have destroyed the bootloader and the PC will only boot straight into Mandriva now - I can’t boot into Ubuntu at all. I’ve posted a separate thread entitled " Bootloader - Broken?" for any help.

Thanks, guys.