etch upgrade blows away /usr/bin? {Scanned}

[Henry Hollenberg <hgh@rcwm.com>]

Hey gang,

Still puzzling over how this happened.  During the upgrade
I got a message about an install script not being able
to make a sym-link in /usr/X11R6/bin because
the directory was "full" and needed to be "emptied".

So I moved it to /root/backup/usr_X11R6/bin where a copy
still resides.

before the final attempt at the upgrade I noticed a bunch
of files in /usr/X11R6/bin that weren't there before.  Not
sure where they came from, I hadn't copied all those files
in there and I certainly hadn't done a sym-link.

So I deleted them and finished the upgrade with no errors.

Checked /usr/X11R6/bin and didn't see a symlink...uh-oh the
upgrade lied to me, what does that mean.

Copied the saved copy back to /usr/X11R6/bin and went back
to work or tried to.

That's when I noticed a whole lots of stuff wasn't working and
a whole lot of commands were MIA including "locate".

Hmmm,

checked /usr/bin and it held the contents of /usr/X11R6/bin
and did not have the 3000 some odd binaries and sym-links that
should be in there.

That's kind of bad.

So what happened, did I do an incredibly bone-headed thing?
Certainly possible, but I wonder if the upgrade scripts
somehow went up an extra level in the directory tree while
making a sym-link and fooled me.

I'm pretty darn sure that the directory I was in was
/usr/X11R6/bin as I make a habit of doing a pwd before
doing an rm just do double check the what the system
prompt is telling me.


It may have had something to do with the three times I tried
to do the upgrade using synaptic before I resorted to manually
backing up and restoring /usr/X11R6/bin and somehow the scripts
got confused.

Anyway, if it wasn't me and was the scripts this is a very bad
thing and needs to be fixed so I figured I would post it.

PS Anyone know a convenient way to restore /usr/bin on an AMD64?

Is there a way to "refresh" an install?

Thanks.

hgh.
--
Henry Hollenberg
hgh@rcwm.com

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