Is there a way to force aptitude or apt-get to completely re-do a version upgrade that got screwed up in the 'upgrade' step? I ran out of room during the 'aptitude full-grade' step. I had done:

(Changed sources.list to refer to 'lenny' instead of 'etch.)
aptitude update
aptitude install dpkg aptitude apt
aptitude upgrade
aptitude full-upgrade

I have since opened up more free space, then did the following:

aptitude update
aptitude upgrade
aptitude full-upgrade
shutdown -r now

All seemed to go well (except I expected more to happen to finish the full-upgrade step). As root I can execute commands. However, although users can log in, they can't execute commands, not even 'ls'. They can't find shared libraries, such as for the 'ls' command, I get the msg:

"ls: error while loading shared libraries: librt.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory"

The runlevel is the default: 2.

Can the upgrade be "fixed," or do I have to reload from a full system backup & start over?

Any help?
Thanks,
Ron

Start over.

I've often heard of this type of failure / problem (something goes screwy during an "upgrade") and it usually leaves a system in such a mess that you'll save yourself time and heartbreak by just reformatting and reinstalling from scratch. Trying to pick such a mess apart usually will take much longer than just admitting defeat and reinstalling from first principles.

For my part, I -never- upgrade, OR use auto-updates. Upgrades rarely succeed, and can be incredibly sensitive operations. It is much better to get a new version in its entirety, and reformat completely and reinstall, than trying to "upgrade". Auto-updates also are notorious for screwing up configurations and systems. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Hm, I've never had a system completely break on a dist-upgrade.

is the 'fix whatever went wrong last time' for apt-get, I don't know if it'll get you out of this mess, but it's likely worth a go. Sometimes it needs running a few times.

Actually I never do the "auto" updates/upgrades, either. However, the last sarge-to-etch upgrade went fine. This time it's my fault for not double-checking disk space. It seems to me always starting from a reformat is putting yourself through the worst case scenario as a default. I may be resorting to that, but it's worth giving an easier route a chance.

Anyway, back to my current problem: re-doing 'apt-get -f install(or upgrade)' does nothing. I tried 'aptitude clean' then 'aptitude update' to re-get all the packages. It gets nothing into /var/cache/apt/archives. Obviously if I can't get the packages down I'm definitely starting from scratch.

So, any apt command or option that FORCES it to bring down all packages for a dist?

Thanks for the replies!
-Ron