Well, my computer started running again today. I couldn’t believe it. When I had finally given up on it the other day, I figured the next time I’d get a chance to see a run prompt was after I’d installed a new motherboard.
There are a number of strange things about this failure. First, all of the segfaults prior to the problem. Second, I must have attempted to reboot about a dozen times without success. It couldn’t even find the various mount points so the times that I got a prompt, I could only peform basic shell commands like ‘ls’ or ‘cd’. Real fancy stuff like ‘cp’ was completely unavailable. There was also the strange CMOS error that occurred one time.
Then, all of a sudden, today while trying to assess things a little more thoroughly and with a clearer head, it fired up. I have it completely disconnected from everything- no network connections, or USB connections, or anything. I haven’t attempted to run ‘X’ either. No sense pushing things now. I’ll shutdown most of the services as well to minimize the potential for more problems.
The motherboard is 10 years old. I’m guessing all of the segfaults are related to hardware issues. I hadn’t installed any new hardware or software when the failure happened. I’m reasonably certain the computer hasn’t been compromised. The only things exposed are the ssh server and the mail server and I’ve disable password authentication for both.
New hardware is on the way. So it’ll be offline until I get the new stuff in. With any luck, the upgrade will be straightforward. One good thing is that my data is still intact. No email for a few days, but hey, it’s New Year’s. The spam can wait. At least I’ve got my EEE.