Fatal server error. Could not create lock file in /tmp/.tXO-lock

[Fintan]

This is bad

I left my machine on for a while (over night) and this morning it would not wake up from key board or mouse actions so I had to hard boot.

Rebooting any of my 3 linuxes did not work and from recovery mode I get:

Fatal server error. Could not create lock file in /tmp/.tXO-lock

xinit no such file or directory unable to connect to x-server
xinit No such process Server error

I was able to boot a live cd once but it never got to the desktop.

After that I tried parted magic and sys rescue cd and found I could not boot from the CD any more.

I thought maybe my video card was trashed so I replaced it with a similar card from my server, that just gave me "out of range" and nothing else.

I am writing from the server right now but I need that machine for other things (dedicated openerp server from a different partition).

Any one have an idea?

Edit:
My card (ATI Radeon 9250 pro) seems to work, at least it does on my server for now. so I uess it is not that.

[dibl]

Re: Fatal server error. Could not create lock file in /tmp/.tXO-lock

That error is something about "X", but I'm not sure what is broken. The "out of range" comes from the monitor, when the video card is not giving it a valid signal (i.e. the driver is not working).

I would boot recovery mode and play with some of the options there. What does "Fix X" do for you? If you can "Drop to root shell", and everything seems to work correctly at the console, then I think the problem is something about your driver or your card or your monitor, when running X.

[jtarin]

Re: Fatal server error. Could not create lock file in /tmp/.tXO-lock

Log in as root and run the fsck command. Example syntax might be:

fsck -A


That will run the filesystem check on all filesystems on your system.

[Fintan]

Re: Fatal server error. Could not create lock file in /tmp/.tXO-lock

Thank you dible & jtarin.
The problem is I cannot get to the grub boot. It tells me out of range before I even get that far.

I think this machine is dead.

Since I need my server for other stuff I will be using my Laptop as main for the moment.

Since all my data HD's are now on the server I will probably have to set up samba for sharing with my lappy.

Not sure how do that since my openerp application server does not automatically mount those drives and I am not sure how to do that. Oh, well it is going to be a long week :P >

[askrieger]

Re: Fatal server error. Could not create lock file in /tmp/.tXO-lock

I'd try booting from a live CD, and taking a look at your /tmp directory. If you have (or had) an xserver running there should be a file called ".XO-lock". I suspect that it goes away when X goes away, but I've never looked. The 't' at the start of the filename may imply (I'm not sure) that the lock is "temporary", for the start up of X and is supposed to go away.

I've googled for your error message without much enlightenment, but I did find that on (at least one Slackware system) the error message continues "Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support for help." However, I couldn't find anything on google from the X.Org Foundation website. (Go figure?).

Basically, your computer won't start an xserver because it thinks that one is already running. My crude, possibly dangerous, solution would be to:
* start your computer in "rescue mode" (or whatever it's called now), without attempting to start an xserver. You may need to use a live CD to do this.
* cd to /tmp/
* delete the little bleeper, if it's still there.
* restart your computer the normal way.

Slightly later: I went to The Xorg Foundation site and had no luck whatsoever. Try for yourself, however. You may be luckier than I.