tricky debian woody update problem
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
I have a server running debian woody and I normally use dselect to decide
which packages to install. I hadn't updated it since about July last year
and I came along to install razor which was shown on the debian web site
under "testing". In order to do this I needed to do a dselect update in
order to find the version of the package that was on the server.
Of course, since its been a long while since the last update this then caused
the download and subsequent update of about 230 packages. As you all know
dselect causes them all to be downloaded (fortunately I have a cable modem
connection) and then starts to update them one by one (I guess in some
controlled order).
Immediately after it had updated libc6 the script that is controlling the
process failed and I can not install any more (segfaulted). I connect into
that machine using ssh from outside and when things fail I can continue to
run bash etc over ssh although random commands just segfault. Eventually I
close ssh but at that point I can never connect again - it seems to get as
far as the bash prompt (I get message of the day up) and then segfaults and
the connection is lost. I assume that all I am doing is contining to run
processes that are holding open the old version libc6 library file and
therefore it still keeping the file until eventually the processes exit.
At this point I have a nearly dead machine. I connect up a monitor (spare
keyboard is always connected) and see the login prompt but cannot login
(never prompted for password, straight back to login). Eventually I reboot
the machine at which point sysvinit obviously runs but the /etc/rcS.d scripts
never run and I am thrown straight into login prompts (on several tty) but
cannot login.
OK - I thought, will just load up by boot floppy with busybox dpkg and
dpkg_deb on it. I have all the downloaded .debs (and I had them on another
machine anyway - all I need to do is find which ones are needed to get as far
as login and the manually expand the files in them and copy all the /lib
/bin /sbin /usr/lib /usr/bin and /usr/sbin files in each deb so that I have a
consistent good set. I concentrate on bash and the libpam libraries as that
looks like it will give me the biggest gain.
However after a few hours of this manual hell it still isn't any better. In
the end I just revert to last nights backup (disk to disk every night - saved
my bacon several times) by copying the /bin /sbin /lib files and the same in
the /usr directory back over.
I now have a working (but not upgraded) system again. In fact I can apt-get
install razor and only razor gets loaded - but I cannot really get the whole
system updated.
What is happening here?
It seems to me that I have a chicken and egg situation with no way around. I
need to update libc6 AND the processes that depend on it at the same time. I
can't update libc6 without screwing up some processes and I can't update the
processes without then screwing up because of an old version of libc6. And
if anything serious breaks I often end up loosing the network and then am
completely stuffed.
How is debian's packaging system supposed to handle a situation like this?
How can I get up to date?
At the moment the only thing I can think of doing is to download a testing CD
image from somewhere and make a CD-R of it - then re-install the root
partition (effectively blowing away the existing contents) - keeping the
other partitions intact. I can re-instate /etc files from my backup once I
have done that to get my old configuration back into working order.
Anyone got any better ideas?
and last question
The only debian woody cds I can see out there on the net are in ".raw"
format, but I am totally unable to find any reference as to what .raw format
means and how to convert them to .iso files so I can burn a CD. How do I do
that?
TIA
- --
Alan - alan@chandlerfamily.org.uk
http://www.chandlerfamily.org.uk
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org
iD8DBQE8P0vq1mf3M5ZDr2kRAhATAJ0Wa5iXjlTJJ9tgdgK6k6USFbv2AgCghaXb
bis7brAPSY17Aveo9+lzdzA=
=CY2W
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Reply to: