Re: [tlug] Linux Filesystems Comparison Article

[Edward Middleton <edwardmiddleton@example.com>]

On Thu, 2006-04-27 at 23:13 -0700, Alain Hoang wrote:
> I'm currently wondering if there's a way to recover my system without
> having to reinstall but considering world is linked against the libc
> version that I had, I don't see any easy way to fix this.   Any
> pointers from more hard-core Linux gurus?  (Besides backups).  Since
> this is my personal desktop machine, I'm not very worried if I have to
> redo everything although I'm now curious if there is a way to recover
> from such a dilemna.

Allways build binary packages.  This will allow you to backout of any
failed upgrade.  You can either emerge the previous binary if it your
system is in a workable state or just untar it over the top if emerge is
no longer working.  You can force the creation of packages on all builds
by adding buildpkg to your FEATURES variable in /etc/make.conf

> Some options I'm thinking of
> 1. Copy all important data I care about, take inventory of installed
> pacakges, and reinstall from scratch)

Probably your best option, if you have the time.

> 2. Untar a stage 3 over the current dead system and try to rebuild
> things in place (sounds utterly risky and jumping into an inconsistent
> state)

I have got the system working doing this but you will probably end up
with files that no longer belong to packages.

> 3. See if I can rebuild the relevant system libraries somehow and
> merge them into the system and see if that gets me limping along just
> enough to emerge world

If you can do this it would be your best bet.  The is basically why you
are best to build packages.

> 4. Do nothing for awhile and wait for some really bright (or bad) idea
> to hit me on how to fix it

5. pull the backup ;)

Edward