[Techtalk] Much filesystem/kernel badness (2.4 won't boot)

[Terri Oda]

My computer didn't get shut down properly, so on reboot, fsck ran and found 
a bunch of errors (mostly in /tmp).  When I got a prompt, X wouldn't run 
because it said it couldn't read the lock file /tmp/.X0-lock and had an error
in locking authority /home/terri/.XAuthority.  After a little bit of looking
to try to determine the cause, I tried a reboot.

My normal 2.4 kernel went a bit crazy and started outputting error messages 
every line # in System.map.  Thankfully, I have an old 2.2 kernel around and I 
could reboot to that.  So I do, and I find that those error messages I was
getting don't appear in any log file (great... I'll try to copy them down when 
I brave another reboot).  I rebuild a new 2.4.  Same problem.  I double check
that I was booting to the new one, double check that the system map is the 
right one... still the same problem.

So, my current theory is that my lockfiles are just all messed up.  I tried 
sending this mail directly from my machine and it didn't work.  I tried 
running fetchmail and it couldn't put anything into /var/spool/mail for me.  I
*have* been able to ssh out to send this mail from a friend's machine.  That's
about it.  

Does this sound at all familiar to anyone, and how to I go about restoring
things so that lockfiles work again and hopefully my more recent kernel will 
be able to boot?

 Terri