I Think I Wrecked My Installation In An Upgrade

hkothari · 10-03-2009, 06:30 AM

So my installation had been working great, and then this morning I had the brilliant idea to do an upgrade to current using slackpkg, well, I installed a series of packages like seamonkeysolibs and xf86 drivers and stuff, and I also checked off to upgrade bash. I believe that's where my problem is, after things started upgrading, slackpkg abruptly stopped with an upgradepkg error, and now whenever I try to do anything I get the:

Code:

Error: cannot execute /bin/sh executable not found

or something similar to that. But if you look /bin/sh is not there, and now that I've turned off my system I'm not going to be able to log back on. I also tried to chroot it from an install disk and it didn't work. Anyone have any ideas on how to help me out of this?

Didier Spaier · 10-03-2009, 07:26 AM

Well, as there is not so much difference between -13.0 and -current for now, my guess is you didn't choose the good mirror in /etc/slackpkg/mirrors, i.e. you chose a slackware64-current mirror instead of a slackware-current (or reverse if you started from a slackware64-13.0).

Not sure you can do better than save your important files using a rescue disk or live cd, then reinstall. If your /home directory is in its own partition you won't have to save its content, provided you do not format it during reinstall.

rg3 · 10-03-2009, 07:31 AM

Quote:

I'll paraphrase a statement I made on IRC a moment ago:

You can break a system with slackroll, with swaret, with slapt-get, with slackpkg, and yes, even doing it "by hand" or "manually" or whatever you want to call it. In all but a small minority of cases, the tool is not to blame - it's user error, even if that error was failing to read and/or understand the documentation on how to use the tool properly.

Ultimately, shit will happen. It also happens to fly farther when using tools.

rworkman was right when he said that. Anyway, back to the point, you should make sure /bin/sh is a link to bash, and that bash exists and can be executed. You can recreate the link using a rescue disk and mounting your partitions, and you can chroot to the system to verify everything is in place and works normally. If not, you can use a USB disk to take packages from there and try to fix the problems and do the upgrade properly. Be sure to check the CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT file of every Slackware version you jump over to -current.

the3dfxdude · 10-03-2009, 08:49 AM

To add, make sure that you have the aaa_elflibs, etc, and glibc packages installed correctly in addition to bash for the version of slackware you are upgrading to.