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[Solved] X session error messege

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franky44
Posts: 17
Joined: 2018-09-18 12:10

[Solved] X session error messege

#1 Post by franky44 »

After I log in as normal user, I get an error message. X session: warning: unable to write to /tmp; X session may exit with an error.
I've never seen an error message like that before. I can't access the GUI. No response from keyboard input. I tried Xterm, but then I couldn't figure out where to go or what to do. At best I could log in as su, and init 6. When I logged back in, the same error message. I went back into Xterm, did the su login so I could to init 0. I'm only able to get here by using a live USB stick of Fedora.

I'm using Debian 9.5 on a Dell laptop with 8 GB of ram, and an SSD.

Thanks for reading this.
Last edited by franky44 on 2018-09-24 10:46, edited 1 time in total.

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GarryRicketson
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Joined: 2015-01-20 22:16
Location: Durango, Mexico

Re: X session error messege

#2 Post by GarryRicketson »

I've never seen an error message like that before.
I don't recall ever seeing this one myself, but there does seem to be a lot of people that have.
X session: warning: unable to write to /tmp; X session may exit with an error.
Maybe you should look at some of the results, and see if any are similar to your situation,
After really trying some things, if none of the solutions in the results work for you, show us some details about what you did, and your system. If you don't know how to use the CLI, then you will need to learn how to do that first, and that would be another topic in itself.

Here is 1 of the many hits, it might apply to your situation:
from: https://unix.stackexchange.com/question ... space?rq=1
accepted
Your root file system is full and hence your temp dir (/tmp, and /var/tmp for that matter) are also full. A lot of scripts and programs require some space for working files, even lock files. When /tmp is unwriteable bad things happen.

You need to work out how you've filled the filesystem up. Typically places this will happen is in /var/log (check that you're cycling the log files). Or /tmp may be full. There's many, many other ways that a disk can fill up, however.

du -hs /tmp /var/log
You may wish to re-partition to give /tmp it's own partition (that's the old school way of doing it, but if you have plenty of disk it's fine), or map it into memory (which will make it very fast but start to cause swapping issues if you overdo the temporary files).---snip--
Read the entire thread, it goes into details on trouble shooting this.

arzgi
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Re: X session error messege

#3 Post by arzgi »

franky44 wrote:After I log in as normal user, I get an error message. X session: warning: unable to write to /tmp; X session may exit with an error.
It says in clear english, that cannot write to /tmp. That is serious, happened once to me too.

Code: Select all

ls -ld /tmp
drwxrwxrwt 14 root root 12288 syys  23 19:59 /tmp
Above are the right settings, /tmp should be 1777.

Try google too, it is quite common problem.

EDIT: As GarryRicketson pointed, other reason is that disk is full. Try

Code: Select all

df -h

franky44
Posts: 17
Joined: 2018-09-18 12:10

Re: X session error messege

#4 Post by franky44 »

I've been getting messages about the disk being full. When I look at the drive through Gparted, it doesn't show a full partition. I'm going to try all the commands ya'all wrote here.

The big question is, How do I repair this?

Thanks folks for the comments and advice.

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GarryRicketson
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Re: X session error messege

#5 Post by GarryRicketson »

Nobody can say how to repair it if we don't know any details about the file system, and what you have been doing ,

You need to work out how you've filled the filesystem up. Typically places this will happen is in /var/log (check that you're cycling the log files).

If you looked at and read the link I showed, you would see that the OP at least gave them some information to work with :
Please post the out put of :

Code: Select all

$ df -h
and

Code: Select all

$ du -hs /tmp /var/log
 
==== edited =======
After looking at your previous posts, in one you mention it is a fresh install ?
But we don't even know if this is the same system you had problems with in your previous posts, any way it seems unlikely that the logs would fill up so soon, and more likely the permission settings, so also please show the output of :

Code: Select all

$ ls -ld /tmp 
You can use 'chmod' to change them if need be, see

Code: Select all

$ man chmod
If you are not sure, just show us what the output of the above command is, and someone can tell you , actually:
Postby arzgi » Above are the right settings, /tmp should be 1777
Arzgi all ready has done that.

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debiman
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Re: X session error messege

#6 Post by debiman »

franky44 wrote:I've been getting messages about the disk being full. When I look at the drive through Gparted, it doesn't show a full partition.
please clarify.
show us.

franky44
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Re: X session error messege

#7 Post by franky44 »

​My most recent problem has been​ some thing-a-ma-bob buried thousands of layers deep in the file system, thought my hard drive was full. Since it couldn't write to the /tmp directory, it got downright stubborn (think female canine) and refused to let me go any further. Some one on another forum suggested ​​ sudo apt-get clean. That wee chunk of code ​got rid of​ what ever was clogging the /tmp directory. ​I couldn't understand how the drive could be full. Then I decided to look into the /var/log directory. I found all kinds of interesting things in there.

After I ran sudo apt-get clean, the system was back to normal, and everything is now right as rain.

Thanks Everyone for your help.

Franky bangs gavel on the table and says "Problem solved. This case is closed."

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sunrat
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Re: X session error messege

#8 Post by sunrat »

franky44 wrote:​My most recent problem has been​ some thing-a-ma-bob buried thousands of layers deep in the file system, thought my hard drive was full.
Thank you for today's chuckle. Outstanding technical description. :lol:
Some one on another forum suggested ​​ sudo apt-get clean. That wee chunk of code ​got rid of​ what ever was clogging the /tmp directory. ​I couldn't understand how the drive could be full. Then I decided to look into the /var/log directory. I found all kinds of interesting things in there.
apt-get clean merely empties the /var/cache/apt/ directory which is worth doing regularly as every update package gets saved there. Logs in /var/log/ have been known to fill hard drives. There was a thread in the last couple of days where this happened.
“ computer users can be divided into 2 categories:
Those who have lost data
...and those who have not lost data YET ”
Remember to BACKUP!

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