[ubuntu-za] NETBOOK CRASH

[Jonathan Groll]

On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 11:40:01AM +0200, vincent wrote:
>Hi Jonathan,
>
>Thanks for the speedy reply.
>
>It's an old windows program called Keyoptimiser Plus. Really old,
>installs from a stiffy. I run it in wine. (A scaled down version of
>Maximiser)
>The files I tried to change ownership of were the Keyopt backup files
>from my desktop, that 10.04 had put a lock on.
>I didn't fiddle with any system files.

Are you really sure you only fiddled with files that fall under your
home directory and were owned by your regular desktop user? Did you
have to sudo in order to do the chown?

I have a hunch that something is wrong in /var, like this situation:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/fedora-35/problem-with-var-lib-gdm-iceauthority-file-711867/

So, do you recall changing anything under /var ?

>As to whether this problem could recur due to keyopt? I really can't say
>as I googled this problem and others have experienced it as far back as
>2005. Before 10.04 was around.

In future, installing wine non-globally, ie. under your home folder
with all files being owned by your desktop user would be a good for
avoiding a repeat of this, as you'll be able to make changes without
requiring sudo. I don't know if this is what was done here or not. How
was wine installed? It's not like other users on your machine need to
run *your* keyopt.

>I've searched for the var/lib/gdm/.ICEauthority file and it's not on the
>system. I've opened hidden files as well.

What do the following say:
ls -alh /var
ls -alh /var/lib
ls -alh /var/lib/gdm
ls -alh /var/lib/gdm/*

Cheers,
Jonathan