slack wont boot. How do I installpkg e2fsprogs?
 

I was trying to trim down my system by removepkg stuff. I am inexperienced, so i thought i could remove e2fsprogs since i am using reiserfs. Turns out e2fsprogs includes libuuid.so.1 which is necessary for reiserfsck and fsck, so my system wont boot now. It will only let me boot into single user mode and the fs is readonly. Hence, even though i managed to mount the slack cd, i couldn't isntallpkg e2fsprogs. So is the system dead? do i jsut have to reinstall slack or is there some other way to save it?

thanks

can you use pkgtool???

from the cd, try to run installpkg with the -root option like (say your root is /dev/hda4) :

installpkg -root /dev/hda4 /path/to/e2fsprogs.tgz

If what cedrik said doesn't work, try mounting the driver first, ie:
mount /dev/hda4 /mnt
and then:
installpkg -root /mnt /path/to/e2fsprogs.tgz

Oh, you can boot using slackware cd 2 (or 1, but 2 is designed for this ;) ) to mount and install the pkg.

ah, so i need to boot from cd instead of from hard drive. i see....i will try that out.
unfortunately, I cannot boot from cd (because it is slave primary ide, i think that's why), but no probs, i just boot the old way by floppy and I will try those out. THank you!

i tried booting from floppy, but it wouldnt even get thru the entire boot process!

I got thru boot disk, and rootdisk (install1) fine, but once i got to rootdisk 2 (install2) it says

Loadign install.2 floppy in to RAM disk... tar: ./bin/ls: input/output error -- read-only file system
tar: Bad tar header, skipping
argh!!!

I thought the floppy was corrupted, so i kept trying to rawrite new floppies. I even redownloaded install.2 from the slackware.com site but it still kept coming up. I give up. I am just reinstalling. I can't go on several days with an unbootable slack box.

a message to all: be careful about what you removepkg! Or your system may be beyond rescue. Boo hoo....

SOrry for reposting but this is rather important. I fixed it!

SO silly...i was trying to do such complex things, trying to boot and mount the /dev/hda2 on my own. THat was all wrong and unnecessary.

All you need to do to repair a slack box that is missing programs is simply to run the installation like normal! that is setup, addswap, but DO NOT format what is mounted as /. Then, when it asks what I want to install, i unchecked everything apart from "a". Then, I chose expert mode, and unchecked everything except e2fsprogs, which is what i need to add to my system.

then i install it. WHen that is done, setup asks me if i need to configure /etc/fstab or lilo. Since i haven't touched them and am merely adding a new package, I skipped it, and rebooted. DONE! I saved my system.

So glad, cos it took me a while to get CUPS working with a DeskJet 720C. SHame if i had to do it all over again when i am so busy at the moment! :)

The 2nd cd of of slack boots as a rescue disk you will be able to do what Cedrik said with it

Thank you denning!!!
You saved me so much time with your post! The exact same thing happened to me, i tried booting from the install cd and even that didn't boot completely, i had just reinstalled 2 weeks ago cos i broke an ext3 filesystem and moved to reiserfs, i have everything backed up (learned the hard way) but it's too much trouble installing/compiling/tweaking so soon again.
I also removed e2fsprogs since i am using reiserfs
Never knew it would say something about libblkid and libuuid, lol!
I wish Shilo could warn more people in his excellent guide here http://shilo.is-a-geek.com/slack/tweak.html about it or post a link to your post.
Adding [Solved] would be nice
Thank you LinuxQuestions.org
Thank you denning
Slackers 0wn