I have redhat linux installed (dual os) on my computer and after installing acroread this morning when i turned my computer on this afternoon i get the following errors and messages:

during interactive startup:
starting at daemon: FAILED

while logging in (nb cant login to my account only as root):
gdm-config-parse:Authdir /var/gdm is not owned by user gdm, group gdm. Aborting.

also i cannot start x or even access my /home/xxx account cos it says:
cd xxx
permission denied

and when shutting down:
NFS statd: FAILED

Thanks in advance for any help
cheers

DJBailey@zfree.co.nz

Sounds like your permissions are fubared. Try running chown -R xxx /home/xxx on your home directory, then try accessing it (as normal user). For var/gdm check out the chown command and look up the appropriate command. It should be somthing like chown -R gdm:gdm /var/gdm.
I can't say why atd is failing to start, sorry there isn't enough info. I would check the logs if I were you. Or you could try to run atd manually and look at the error message. BTW if gdm isn't working then yout won't be able to login via X11 (since gdm is front end to xdm display manager). However, once your home directory permissions are set properly (and you can read it) you ought to be able to run startx in a console (not when gdm is running).
Good luck.