[gentoo-user] Mysterious failure of ConsoleKit

[Peter Humphrey <peter@humphrey.ukfsn.org>]

Hello list,

Today my workstation has refused to start consolekit, giving this error:

 * Starting ConsoleKit daemon ...
 * start-stop-daemon: did not create a valid pid in `/var/run/ConsoleKit/pid'  [ !! ]
 * ERROR: consolekit failed to start

Then of course I can't log in via kdm; but X still detects my keystokes and allows 
me to switch to a VT. If I boot to a console instead and then startx I've no further 
problems.

The system started up the first time today just fine, but all attempts to restart 
since then have failed. Here are the things I've tried:

1.	Downgraded consolekit from 0.4.3 to 0.4.2-r4, even though the upgrade 
was done on 8 Dec.
2.	Removed the automounting of my Atom chroot from the default run level; I'd 
been playing with it and thought it just possible that it had started interfering 
somehow.
3.	Run fsck -f on all partitions, having booted my rescue system from a 
different kernel: no problems found.
4.	Booted the previous kernel, gentoo-sources-2.6.35-r11, which had been 
running until late October, instead of the usual 2.6.36-r5.
5.	Booted ck-sources 2.6.36-r3.
6.	Checked permissions on /var/run and /var/run/ConsoleKit; nothing suspicious 
there, and I can touch the pid file myself ok.
7.	Checked bugzilla for consolekit faults.

The only thing I've emerged today is nfs-utils.

I can't think of anything else I've changed. On the other hand, the last couple of 
days I have been working on setting up an nfs and chroot method of maintaining 
my Atom server box, as described by Neil B. in another thread, in the course of 
which I may have done something stupid - and my memory is getting 
embarrassingly fallible these days.

Can anyone see anything else I could check?

-- 
Rgds
Peter.          Linux Counter 5290, 1994-04-23.