Peter Skensved wrote:
I would start by backing up /root, /boot, /etc and /var
plus anything installed in /usr/local and /home . Next get a list of
all installed RPMs ( rpm -qa | sort or rpm -a --qf "%{NAME}\n" | sort )
and save them somewhere. With that information you can probably reconstruct
your laptop if everything fails ( this assumes you always install binaries
from RPM files and stuff from random tar files in /usr/local )
Once you have done that run rpm -Va and save the output. This
will give you a list of missing files. Try installing the missing
ones with rpm -Uv --force . If that works then heck for .rpmnew files
and try reconstructing any munged configuration files.
I've successfully done the above with a really clobbered file system
on a laptop.
peter
----
Peter Skensved Email : peter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Dept. of Physics,
Queen's University,
Kingston, Ontario,
Canada
Hi Peter,
Thanks for your advice. I managed to install enough libraries manually
to get rpm up and running again.
What will the rpm -Uv --force command actually do? I looked at the
output of rpm -Va and it was shocking, it took about 3 minutes to finish!
Best regards,
Alastair
