Administrative problems

[Troll_the_Great]

Hello all!
I have some strange problems with my system...First, my system monitor is not working anymore. If I click on it nothing happens and if I run it in a terminal I get:

troll@my-precious:~$ gnome-system-monitor

** (gnome-system-monitor:23639): WARNING **: SELinux was found but is not enabled.


** ERROR **: Child 23640 failed with status 256
aborting...
Aborted

Then, my Hardware Drivers and Software sources stopped working too.... I don't know the commands to run them in a terminal, so at least I can see the error messages.
Can someone help?

[carml]

Did you try to reboot and choose the recovery mode->try to fix broken packages? However it's a shot in the dark.

[Troll_the_Great]

Did you try to reboot and choose the recovery mode->try to fix broken packages? However it's a shot in the dark.

No use...

PS: what is this SELinux anyway? I had used Hardy for over a year now and never heard or had problems with it...

[carml]

Sorry,the one I suggested you is at the moment my last resort.
SELinux is a word I see on boot,if I recall correct, sorry.
What you was doing before that error?

[decoherence]

No use...

PS: what is this SELinux anyway? I had used Hardy for over a year now and never heard or had problems with it...

Hi there,

The SELinux warning probably isn't important. I get the same warning and it runs fine for me. FYI, SELinux is a security framework. It is included in Ubuntu but not enabled by default because it's overkill for what most people need and complicates the system.

According to Google, there are others who have had this problem but the issues seem to resolve themselves or are resolved by installing additional packages from the repository (neither of which makes sense.)

I used the search terms

gnome-system-monitor "failed with status 256"

I'm not going to suggest a solution because they all suck. Take your pick!

Also, if you have the time take a look at this and see if you can get a bug report going.

ADD: you may have difficulty following the directions in that link. It appears there is something wrong with Ubuntu's keyserver. Very, very unfortunate I'll start up a new thread for that. For now, you can ignore the parts about adding signed keys -- it'll work anyway.

[Troll_the_Great]

What you was doing before that error?

Well....nothing, or nothing noticeable to recall.It just stopped working, along with Hardware Drivers and Software Sources...

[carml]

I looked for SELinux on Google and I found the same result:it's a security feature.
Did you try to reboot the system and find out if the problem pops up again?

[Troll_the_Great]

Hy all! I figured out what my problem was, and it had nothing to do with SELinux. I found a chap with similar problems here: http://tech.element77.com/2008/08/ub...obal-name.html It seems that apt failed due to an internal failure in lsb_release. I corrected it by removing

deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib non-free

from /etc/apt/sources.list .I don't know why it suddenly stopped working, but I'm glad I fixed it.
Cheers!

PS:Now that I found out what SELinux is, do I need it? Should I install it?

[mcduck]

PS:Now that I found out what SELinux is, do I need it? Should I install it?

You already have it installed, and no, you don't need it unless you work for NSA or some other shady government agency or other organization that requires extremely high security.

For any normal use, be it in home or in corporate environment, SELinux is overkill.