Fedora 8_64 "X_respawning_too_fast"

ehdwuld · 05-25-2008, 12:33 PM

Ok all was well
loaded a few days ago, set it to update the 133 package updates last night

this morning it appears to have crashed when i did

x not working when i awoke , restarted box got the error message in the
title

loads in text only

i'm a gui type of guy and am lost as to how to repair this in "terminal window"

oh yea had a similar issue with Fedora 8_i386

on the same box , only cured it with a complete wipe and reinstall
really dont want to go that route this time

please help

MensaWater · 05-25-2008, 12:38 PM

When you see "respawning too fast" it means something in /etc/inittab set to "respawn" is dieing every time it starts.

First step is to vi /etc/inittab and find the line that is trying to start whatever says respawning too fast. Change the "respawn" to "off" then save it. Type "init q" to make it reread the inittab.

After that try the command it was executing at command line to see what kind of message the basic command is getting. Once you've figured that out you can change it back to "respawn" and run "init q" again.

ehdwuld · 05-25-2008, 12:52 PM

ok

looked up the /etc/inittab

last line in tab says

#Run xdm in runlevel5
x:5:respawn:/etc/X11/prefdm -nodaemon

how do i edit that out?

remove the :respawn ?

put an # in front of line , to set it to ignore the line?

thank you

MensaWater · 05-25-2008, 01:31 PM

As stated above - change the word "respawn" to "off" then save and type "init q".

ehdwuld · 05-25-2008, 02:16 PM

Thank you for your patience

as instructed
replaced "respawn" with "off"
back at prompt, typed "init q"
response was
"bash: init: command not found"

ehdwuld · 05-25-2008, 03:15 PM

ok started the rescue installation from dvd
at shell prompt
got this

anaconda installer init version 11.3.0.50 starting
mounting /proc filesystem... done
creating /dev filesystem... done
mounting /dev/pts (unix98 pty) filesystem... done
mounting /sys filesystem... done