RH GIU Missing as Root

pwwiebe

Hi all,

I'm running an old AMD K6II - 450 with RH 7.2 workstation - just using it as a file server on my network. I store some fairly important data there and back it up to a FreeNAS box.

I need to change the IP address as I'm made significant changes to my network configuration.

But I'm having problems with the RH box when I login as Root. I don't get any interface popping up after re-booting anymore. No gnome gui, no CLI - nothing, just a dark blue screen. When I login as a regular user, I get Gnome and all is good. But I also can't run sudo commands as the regular user, because the user isn't included in Sudoer's group.

So I can't edit some of the machine's files under etc/../network-scripts to modify the IP address, because I'm not Root.

Any ideas on how I can get an interface back up? Is there a key command, or something else I can check?

Thanks for your help!

P

mfillpot

I don't quite understand how all interfaces are inaccessible for root, and if the security it setup correctly you shouldn't be able to modify /etc files as a regular user. You could su into the root account from the terminal in a normal user account to make the changes or boot from a bootable distro to chroot into the system as root to make corrections.

Since I don't know the origin of of the issue that caused your interfaces to be disabled as root, I will guess that something is wrong with your configuration files that are stored in the root account. You could try to delete the xinit and .gnome files and directories from the /root directory to force the system to rebuild your configuration files from the system defaults for that user's interfaces.

pwwiebe

Thanks mfillpot,

I've spent so much time sudo'ing on ubuntu lately, that I forget that I should be able to su into the root account in reg. linux flavors. I'll try that to make my network config changes and report back.

On the issue with the interfaces for root, I'm guessing I would need to su into root to delete those files as well? Is that a comprehensive list of files that would get re-created? I'm no Linux/RH guru...

Thanks for your help.

P

mfillpot

I am a kde user and I don't usually run redhat, so I can't quite list all files and directories that you need to remove. Can you please paste the output of the file list (ls -la) from the /root directory, don't forget to remove the personal files (there is no need for me to see them). Once I see that list I will report back with the files that you should remove.

pwwiebe

Thanks for your help - I'll grab that and paste in it. It's people like you that make the internet go round!

In the meantime I have a question related to my IP address change. I was able to su into root and change my IP address, but I had to modify other things, like my smb.conf file to get my machine back on the network. In looking around and doing those tasks I noticed something strange. I see hostnames defined in several places, and given I was having trouble finding the machine on the network, I thought I'd ask about it. Things are working now, but I'd like to understand a little more about which hostname applies in which context.

Here are the contents of the various files:
(carbonite is the name of the machine on my network)

/etc/HOSTNAME:

carbonite.mydomain.com

/etc/sysconfig/network:

NETWORKING=yes
HOSTNAME=localhost.localdomain

/etc/samba/lmhosts:

127.0.0.1 localhost

pwwiebe

Here's the contents of the /root directory.

[total 248

drwxr-x--- 20 root root 4096 Nov 26 15:38 .

drwxr-xr-x 19 root root 4096 Nov 26 15:13 ..

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2657 Mar 29 2003 anaconda-ks.cfg

-rw

---

1 root root 7395 Nov 26 15:10 .bash_history

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 24 Jun 10 2000 .bash_logout

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 234 Jul 5 2001 .bash_profile

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 176 Aug 23 1995 .bashrc

drwx

---

2 root root 4096 Jan 1 2005 .cddbslave

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 210 Jun 10 2000 .cshrc

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 42 Mar 30 2003 .DCOPserver_localhost.localdomain -> /root/.DCOPserver_localhost.localdomain_:0

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Nov 26 15:38 dir.text

-rw

---

1 root root 16 May 5 2005 .esd_auth

drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Dec 11 2004 firefox-installer

drwx

---

3 root root 4096 May 20 2006 .gconf

drwx

---

2 root root 4096 May 20 2006 .gconfd

drwxr-x--- 3 root root 4096 Jun 14 2004 .gftp

drwx

---

9 root root 4096 Oct 13 18:56 .gnome

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 31 2004 .gnome-desktop

drwx

---

2 root root 4096 Jan 1 2005 .gnome_private

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 118 Aug 9 2001 .gtkrc

drwxr-xr-x 12 pwwiebe pwwiebe 4096 Jun 13 2004 httpd-2.0.49

-rw

---

1 root root 1040 Oct 13 18:56 .ICEauthority

drwx

---

4 root root 4096 Mar 30 2003 .kde

-rw

---

1 root root 32 May 5 2005 .MCOP-random-seed

drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Jan 21 2004 .mozilla

-rw

---

1 root root 2678 Feb 19 2006 .mysql_history

drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Dec 11 2004 .nautilus

drwxr-xr-x 18 1003 1003 4096 Jun 13 2004 php-4.3.7

drwxr-xr-x 10 1000 1000 4096 Mar 13 2005 sampdb

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 92160 Feb 11 2006 sampdb.tar.gz

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 48 Dec 19 2004 .saves-23960-localhost.localdomain~

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 48 Dec 19 2004 .saves-23963-localhost.localdomain~

drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Jan 21 2004 .sawfish

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 196 Jul 11 2000 .tcshrc

drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 May 8 2005 tmp

drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 May 14 2005 .Trash

drwx

---

3 root pwwiebe 4096 Jan 21 2007 .xauth

-rw

---

1 root root 67 Nov 26 15:17 .Xauthority

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1126 Aug 23 1995 .Xresources

-rw

---

1 root root 1042 Oct 13 18:56 .xsession-errors
[/code]

woboyle

Login with your regular (non-root) account. Once in gnome, start up a terminal command-line window. Once there, you can switch user to root with the command: su -
It will ask for the root password. Once you are in as root you can alter your .bash_profile and such to get your environment sorted out, not to mention all the other cruft you need to deal with related to the network changes.

mfillpot

Network settings

/etc/networking - defines the hostname and domain for your system as it is read by the apps

/etc/sysconfig/network - defines the networking settings per adapter, you may have different adapter that you want identified as being on different networks (as in being a router) that may also need to be on separate domains. I understand that you don't have that option enabled, but the file is there if you choose to enable and setup the option.

/etc/samba/lmhosts - The lmhosts file is the Samba Net BIOS name to IP address mapping file. It is very similar to the /etc/hosts file format, except that the hostname component must correspond to the Net BIOS naming format. You use this file to address netbios names to ip addresses for the samba systems to utilize for connections.

Login
It looks like you have used a couple of guis and a few different shell environments as root, this makes it a little harder to pinpoint the cause, I would recommend trying to login through different guis and differnt shells to see if any of them work, that would help us to locate the effected files.

Ok, now for the list of files that may be the cause of your login issues, I am listing the files now for information purposes, but I don't think any of them should be touched until you tell the guis and shells as stated above.

.bashprofile - This file sets up the variable and arguments for bash sessions which are started as the user.

.bashrc - essentially the same as .bashprofile

.cshrc - This file sets up the variable and arguments for cshell sessions which are started as the user.

.DCOPserver_localhost.localdomain - This file is pointing to a file that does not exist in the use profile, so it is a dead link. For information about the DCOP server you can go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCOP, the simple summary is that it is a software communication interface for apps to talk tp each other.

.gconf - GConf is a system for storing application preferences. It is intended for user preferences; not configuration of something like Apache, or arbitrary data storage.

.gconfd - GConf is implemented as a per-user daemon called gconfd. gconfd actually accesses the user's configuration backends by dynamically loading the appropriate backend modules. gconfd is also in charge of sending out notifications to interested applications when configuration values are modified.

.gnome - I don't run gnome and can't exactly say what is contained in this folder/file, someone else may be able to answer.

.gone-desktop - I don't run gnome and can't exactly say what is contained in this folder/file, someone else may be able to answer.

.gnome-private - I don't run gnome and can't exactly say what is contained in this folder/file, someone else may be able to answer.

.gtk - GTK+ is a highly usable, feature rich toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces which boasts cross platform compatibility and an easy to use API.

ICEauthority - This file contains info that is used for editing and diplaying authorization info for remote machines.

.kde - This folder contains the configuration files for your KDE environment.

.tcshrc - This file sets up the variable and arguments for tsh sessions which are started as the user.

.Xauthority - This file xontains a security cookie for X display access control.

.Xresources - This file contains the listing of resources and setting as used by the X11 display server.


Sorry it took so long I had to lookup some of these file descriptions.

pwwiebe

Thanks for your comprehensive summary. I'll review it and post back with more info once I've tried your suggestions. (I may need help with them too!)

Thanks also for your info on my HOSTNAME questions. That helps.

PW