[lug] fedora 4,5 segmentation fault (strange)

[KRITZBERG DAVID OWEN]

Hello BLUG folks,

I was using yum to install a newer version of gnuchess on my FC4
machine.  Previously I tried using yum to upgrade from FC4 to FC5 but
ran into some bad DSA signatures and abandoned that task.  I never got
back to it but never had any indication that there was anything wrong
either.

But I still had the FC5 repositories set up in yum.  After the install
of a newer version of gnuchess, which required updating some libc rpms
and maybe some other stuff I didn't notice, I got a segmentation fault
when attempting to start gnuchess from the command line.  Then I
noticed emacs had crashed giving a "bad window" error report to the
command line in another shell window.

So I restarted the machine (bad Windows habit).

I found that I could no longer use my USB keyboard at boot, and the
system was not starting X automatically.  I switched keyboards to PS2,
rebooted, and then I found that I could enter a user name (root, dave)
but then trash printed to the screen and I couldn't enter a password.
So I now have a pretty bad situation on my hands.

And this is what I see on the monitor:
*********************************************************************
Fedora Core release 5 (Bordeaux)
Kernel 2.6.13-1.2069_FC4 on an i686

(none) login:      561:     U(some trash characters) 561: (different
string of trash characters)
*********************************************************************

I have tried starting with older 2.6 kernels I never cleaned out, and
the behavior is the same.

Perhaps I should boot into a lower run level.  I get the impression
that X is not the problem.  I wish I had a better memory of which
libraries were installed.  I suppose I could check that if I knew
where yum put its archive.

I tried hitting 'a' in grub, selecting run levels 1 2 3 4 in turn, and
each time got the same result as the default, of the text login page I
copied above.

Perhaps it is the keyboard, or the mouse.  I changed both, and that
didn't affect the behavior.

For some reason, crap is being entered to the screen or the general
input parameters at boot.  What is causing this?

Thanks for any help anyone can offer.

Dave

-------------------------------------------------
David Owen Kritzberg          david at kritzberg.net
Economics Dept,             Univ. of CO - Boulder
Campus Box 256              Boulder CO 80309-0256
Tel: 303-492-7709               Fax: 303-492-8960

"Consolation": Calm down. Both your sins and your
good deeds will be lost in oblivion.  --C. Milosz