X does not work after partial install install of glibc using up2date
 

I used up2date on RedHat 9 to update glibc, but one of the packages didn't download correctly, but the rest were still installed. When I rebooted and I try to run X (or other programs, eg rpm) I get the following message:

/usr/bin/gnome-session: relocation error: /lib/i686/libpthread.so.0: symbol _h_errno, version GLIBC_2.0 not defined in file libc.so.6 with link time reference

how would I install the missing rpm so that everything works again. Or alternately how can I install the previous version of glibc from the cdroms seeing that the rpm command doesn't work.

Thanks in advance.

I once had a botched glibc update under RH8. It made my system unusable to the point that it wouldn't boot the next time I restarted it. So if you can don't reboot your system otherwise you could have trouble starting RH9 again. You could try to temporaritly install the old glibc rpms from the RH9 CDs using the --force option of rpm. First try doing "rpm -Fvh --force glibc*.rpm nscd*.rpm". If that doesn't work you may have to try using "rpm -Uvh --force glibc*.rpm nscd*.rpm".

this doesn't work, I just get the following error message

rpm: relocation error: /lib/i686/libpthread.so.0: symbol _h_errno, nersion GLIBC_2.0 not defined in file libs.co.6 with link time reference

Its like rpm is not running at all. Am I doomed to have to reinstall?

That doesn't look good. It looks like rpm relies on libpthread.so.0. That rules out my first idea. I have another idea for you to try. If you can mount your RH9 CD you could try to extract the libpthread.so.0 file from the install image on it. First you'd create another mount point under /mnt:

$ mkdir /mnt/image

Then put your RH9 CD1 in your CD-ROM drive and mount it and the install image:

$ mount /mnt/cdrom
$ mount -ro loop /mnt/cdrom/RedHat/base/

Then try to copy across libpthread.so.0 across to /lib.

$ cp -a /mnt/cdrom/RedHat/base/lib/libpthread* /lib

If this was successful then try to run rpm again. This is a long shot though. If this doesn't work I can't really think of another way to get around not having to do a reinstall.