I was trying to upgrade glibc and in the process deleted it, now I can't get to a shell to reinstall. My default is bash, but I can't do anything. Even if I use ls I get a file can't be found error.

How can I get back in to reinstall glibc.

Thanks

What distro are you using??

Slackware 10

try booting a live CD, or your slack install CDs.

chroot to your native root directory, then installpkg glibc (from the slackware install CD)

Since there are no stupid questions, how do I go about this. I tried from the prompt on the CD and got a kernel panic.

this is what i've used before, if you're using not-sata devices then pick a different kernel, probably huge26.s, and your 'root=' should point to some hdXN partition, where X=a-c and N=1-? i.e.
above would work if you're using ide drive primary master, and the first partition is where your root fs resides.

indeed, if this works you should not have to chroot.

you'll then ? need to make sure that you can find the CD you booted off, then look in /dev/cdrom/slackware/ for glibc

sorry, not sure which directory thats in.

*note, if you have /usr, /home or other base filesystems on other partitions it would be good (required?) to mount these as well before trying to installpkg.

*note- you may have to fully specifiy the path to installpkg (i think its just /sbin/installpkg but could be /usr/... somewhere)

Now we're getting somewhere, but not quite. I was able to get into root and mount my /home directory which is on another HD - this is also where I DL'd the new versions of glibc. But when I try to use pkgtool to install, I get a message that it can't find /etc/somefile, and I'm back to square one.

Thanks

Voila. Got it. Thanks, I owe you my first born. Have to get smaller fingers so I don't hit delete again.

Thanks again

I last question. I noticed now I have lib, usr and var directories under my home directory. This may have been due to my first attempt at installing glibc which didn't work - I'm assuming these should be safe to delete - or maybe rename to make sure they aren't being used for anything.

glad you got it working.

sorry, i've reached the end of my usefulness here

I too, am a newbie.

I only knew that trick above because I've had similar screwups