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

[Lee Woodworth]

KRITZBERG DAVID OWEN wrote:
> 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 don't know much Fedora these days but here are some thoughts:

1) Can't enter a password: your login program is corrupted/hosed because
   of some inconsistent libc library versions (some with old libc,
   some with new libc)

2) My guess is your whole system is in an inconsistent state and that
   most programs will have problems because of old vs. new libc
   linkage.

3) Use a fedora rescue disk to force a complete update of all installed
   packages so everybody uses the new libc.