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Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 13:21:52 +0200
From: "albi@scii.nl" <albi@scii.nl>
To: William Manley <wmanley@intergate.com>
Message-Id: <20050810132152.7932cce7.albi@scii.nl>
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References: <42F95459.5080208@intergate.com>
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Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: FreeBSD 5.4 install problem. Newbee needs help.
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On Tue, 09 Aug 2005 21:11:53 -0400
William Manley <wmanley@intergate.com> wrote:

> I am a new FreeBSD user and I have an installation that has gone bad.
> My  problems started when I enabled XDM for a graphical logon into
> Gnome.  When I logged in as root the system just looped back to the
> logon  screen. I then assumed I had configured my .xinitrc file wrong

xdm,gdm,kdm,wdm do not use your .xinitrc (but they can use your
.Xsession or .xsession file), .xinitrc is only used with the command
startx

> so I  booted the install cdrom into Fixit mode and tried to mount the
> root  filesystem on the hardisk which the operating system would not
> let me  do. The following are the commands I typed with the output.
> 
> mount /dev/ad0s1a /mnt
> operation not permitted

you could instead boot from harddisc in "single mode" (sp?), then remove
xdm or configure xdm properly or use gdm or use gnome-session in your
.xinitrc