We present a randomized algorithm that, on input a symmetric, weakly diagonally dominant n-by-n matrix A with m nonzero entries and an n-vector b, produces a y such that $\norm{y - \pinv{A} b}_{A} \leq ε\norm{\pinv{A} b}_{A}$ in expected time $O (m \log^{c}n \log (1/ε)),$ for some constant c. By applying this algorithm inside the inverse power method, we compute approximate Fiedler vectors in a similar amount of time. The algorithm applies subgraph preconditioners in a recursive fashion. These preconditioners improve upon the subgraph preconditioners first introduced by Vaidya (1990). For any symmetric, weakly diagonally-dominant matrix A with non-positive off-diagonal entries and $k \geq 1$, we construct in time $O (m \log^{c} n)$ a preconditioner B of A with at most $2 (n - 1) + O ((m/k) \log^{39} n)$ nonzero off-diagonal entries such that the finite generalized condition number $κ_{f} (A,B)$ is at most k, for some other constant c. In the special case when the nonzero structure of the matrix is planar the corresponding linear system solver runs in expected time $ O (n \log^{2} n + n \log n \ \log \log n \ \log (1/ε))$. We hope that our introduction of algorithms of low asymptotic complexity will lead to the development of algorithms that are also fast in practice.