[CS-FSLUG] How to resolve anapparent Linux crash

[linux at rmf.mailshell.com]

Hi everyone,
I'm back to report on trying out the various pieces of advice you gave me on my apparent crash of Linux or Mandrake 9.1 . I took time off to do that last night.

Since there were quite a few, I'll try to condense this rather than doing a lot of quoting. Just to refresh your memories, I have no graphics or links on my desktop so I can't get into Mandrake Control to change any settings. I had figured out how to get a command prompt, but didn't (still don't ) know what commands to give.

First I tried Jukka's idea of  Ctrl+Alt++ to resize the screen in case the graphics were just beyond the edge.  (Easiest first). No go. It did adjust the black edges of the screen, but didn't bring the toolbar, or anything to click on back.

I tried Kathy's idea next to bring up a console with the Alt+<Fn> or function keys. No go. You said  using Alt+Ctrl+backspace would kill my X server. Oh-oh! Maybe the damage has already been done? However, NumLock with Ctl+Alt did bring on the command line. I put in my login and password... now what? :)

So I tried various commands that I thought would get me nto /etc/X11/XF86Config files the way Bradley suggested. I kept getting "no such directory" so I suspect I didn't have the full path correct. Can you give me a bit more help there?

David M. asked if I was running KDE. Yes, I am/was, but I couldn't figure out how to get to that folder to rename it.

I did try too, to stick a floppy in and give the command;
dd if=/home/*myusername"/Mail of=/dev/fd0
The answer I got was, 
is a directory
0+0 records in
0+0 records out.
In other words, nothing happened.

Somewhere I'd read that you could type *man* and a command, and the manual pages would come up right at the command line. So I entertained and educated myself for a while by trying that with different words. A lot of them had no man pages, but bash - now that was another story! Got far more than I could absorb or understand at one sitting. :)

It looks like I may just have to try a re-install and forget the files I started in my two week honeymoon in Mandrake, or else take that other piece of advice,  - wait for Mandrake 10.1 and upgrade.

Thanks to everyone who offered ideas. I've appreciated them, and learned again from my efforts. Just think; one day I'll be helping others because of the things things I'm struggling through to get out of my chrysalis!

By the way, anybody got some good experience with form2mail php scripts?


Blessings & Thanks,
Ruth
http://Ruthes-SecretRoses.com
When you meet Ruthe and her Friend - you've got Friends


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