I broke apache and hacked a fix, but what happened and how do I fix it properly?

[Ivan Uemlianin <iau@ukfsn.org>]

Dear All

(apologies for the long subject line)

I had a perfectly good Apache installation; broke it (by accident) and 
hacked a fix.  But I'd like to know what happened and how to fix it 
properly.

The error I was getting is:

debian:/# apache

apache: error while loading shared libraries: libdb.so.2: cannot open 
shared object file: No such file or directory

debian:/# ls -l /lib/libdb*
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       233488 Apr 18  2002 lib/libdb.so.3
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           15 Sep 24 10:06 lib/libdb2.so.2 
-> libdb2.so.2.7.7
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       262812 Apr 18  2002 lib/libdb2.so.2.7.7

And the fix I did was just:

debian:/# cd /lib
debian:/lib# ln -s libdb.so.3 libdb.so.2

But surely that only fixes the symptoms, not what was actually wrong.


Here's the story:

1. Apache 1.3 working on Debian Woody.

2. I tried installing anjuta_0.9.99-1_i386.deb with dpkg -i and got this 
message:

Reading Package Lists...
Building Dependency Tree...
Sorry, anjuta is already the newest version.
You might want to run `apt-get -f install' to correct these:
Sorry, but the following packages have unmet dependencies:
  anjuta: Depends: libdb3 (>= 3.2.9-17) but 3.2.9-16 is to be installed
          Depends: libfreetype6 (>= 2.1.1-1) but 2.0.9-1 is to be installed
          Depends: libgdk-pixbuf2 (>= 0.18.0-1) but 0.17.0-2 is to be 
installed
          Depends: libpopt0 (>= 1.6.4) but 1.6.2-7 is to be installed
  locales: Depends: glibc-2.2.5-6
E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or 
specify a solution).

3. Found and installed the required packages, again with dpkg -i.

4. Had a go with Anjuta - didn't like it (no offence meant).

5. Uninstalled all those debs, reinstalled the originals, using dselect.

6. Now, trying to run apache gets this message:

apache: error while loading shared libraries: libdb.so.2: cannot open 
shared object file: No such file or directory

7. uninstalling and reinstalling apache has no effect.

8. debian:/# ls -l /lib/libdb*
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       233488 Apr 18  2002 lib/libdb.so.3
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           15 Sep 24 10:06 lib/libdb2.so.2 
-> libdb2.so.2.7.7
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       262812 Apr 18  2002 lib/libdb2.so.2.7.7

Is there a package missing? Did installing Anjuta et al. damage some 
other packages?

Any comments welcome

Best wishes

Ivan