I'm not exactly a But I made a VERY VERY dumb mistake. Too much coffee or something.

I put a RH9 cdrom into a RH8 server, wanting to install compilers. so I could compile stuff. When I tried using the Xwindow Redhat Package Manager, it complained about a handful of RPM's failing deps, so I went to the command line and RPM -Uvh blah.rpm --nodeps..

Dumb dumb (kicking myself in the head) I wont even go into WHY I did this... Just.. dumb.

So, I've hosed my system.. Samba doesn't work, Xwindows doesn't work, SSH doesn't work... I'm not sure what to do. I tried putting in the RH8 cdrom and RPM -Uvh blah.rpm those RPM's I overwrote with the RH9 packages, but it tells me those files are already installed.

Files in question that I really screwed up are:

openssl
openldap
cyrus-sasl
glibc
krb5-libs

All the above were up2date'ed as of today on the RH8 machine. I later in the day popped in a RH9 disc (by mistake by the way.. label those ISO burns well, folks!) and RPM -Uvh package.rpm --nodeps all of the above.

What do you folks suggest I do now? Feel free to call me names, but please post some suggestions

Hmmm... maybe take those "files already installed" and 'rpm -e' them. Then go back and 'rpm -i' them with red hat 8 CD? Just a thought.

Certainly don't do that on my suggestion, but maybe give it some thought and wait for advice from others.

First of all, you can downgrade packages with rpm option: --oldpackage

Boot first CD in rescue mode. Don't enter your system via chroot. That means, don't follow the on-screen instructions. Instead, mount your system's partitions manually. Then use the rescue system's rpm tool to erase/upgrade/install/whatever packages on the mounted system. RPM parameter --root /mnt/something will help you to access the correct system, e.g.

rpm --root /mnt/sysimage -Uvh glibc*.rpm --oldpackage

Folks if you can afford the space, you guys should definitely toggle the "keep RPM's" after up2date :P It would have made things MUCH easier..

I'm still trying to get this sucker back up.

I'm not sure what the suggestion from Misc is all about.. Why would I want to mount my partitions manually? I'm confused with what you are suggesting, Misc...

Well, you wrote that glibc is messed up. So, does your system still work? If not, you need rescue mode. In your original posting, the current state of your system doesn't become clear at all. In case your system -- and in particular, rpm -- still works, what is your problem?

Sorry for being unclear.

I boot up fine to the command line. I can do stuff on the command line, but Samba , SSH, Sendmail are all broken. I'm sure there are other problems, but these are the only one I have noticed so far.

These are the packages I forced --nodeps on (dumb me)

openssl
openldap
cyrus-sasl
glibc
krb5-libs

----some time passes as ToBe tinkers----

AHA!!!! THANK YOU! the --oldpackages --nodeps did the trick! Samba is back up, SSH & StartX are all functional!

Thank you thank you thank you thank you!!!