[SOLVED] installing new kernel broke my system

mreff555 · 07-06-2013, 09:50 PM

while recompiling the kernel I managed to screw up a bunch of my access permissions. Nothing is working right. The problem, is that I cannot find any sign of a problem, so I'm not even sure what to check. Bottom line, there were only three commands run as root before the problem occoured.

Code:

1. sudo make modules-install
2. sudo make install
3. sudo shutdown -r now

Has anyone ever seen the kernel install script screw up access permissions?

I'm sorry about the vagueness of this question. Further details an be found in my first post which I have been having trouble getting anyone to respond to.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...rs-4175468577/

jpollard · 07-06-2013, 10:20 PM

It might help to know what the errors are that you get.

Also, it is possible that the crash corrupted some files, depending on when/where it crashed. One of the problems I have with systemd based systems is that it seems trivial to corrupt the handling of a login - and once it is f*d up, it stays f*d up.

mreff555 · 07-07-2013, 07:33 AM

Originally I wasn't getting any errors. I simply couldn't log in from SLiM. it immediately returned to the prompt. No errors.
I was still able to logon via startx.

As I am running like this I am starting to notice other odd problems.

1. I got a popup warning randomly at some point. I don't remember exactly what it said, but it led me to believe there was a permissions problem with power management

2. I'm getting weird messages about "to many symbolic links" if I try to extract a tar.gz or tar.bz2 file without decompressing it first.
3. I'm having trouble compiling anything. I get the same symbolic link error

Code:

dan@waldorf:~$ echo 'int main() {return 0;}'> test.cpp
dan@waldorf:~$ g++ -o test test.cpp
g++: error trying to exec 'as': execvp: Too many levels of symbolic links

jpollard · 07-07-2013, 10:57 AM

You might do a "find" looking for all symbolic links. It sounds like one of them is either pointing to itself or to its immediate parent...

A suggested starting point would be to look at the directories listed in your PATH environment variable. The reason I say "starting point" is that it is possible for it to be in a subdirectory of something there.

mreff555 · 07-14-2013, 12:47 PM

I gave up. backed up my home directory and reformatted. without a working compiler I couldn't even fix my kernel.
Oh well. problem solved, sort of.