Re: we've been hosed, Tommy
cyn <cyn@cyn.org> writes:
> In a flurry of unwise decision, while trying to setup synchronization of
> my clie and looking at java sdk 1.4.1 - I attempted to upgrade my libc6 to
> 2.3.1 from 2.2.5 - a process that I didn't see as a huge problem as I
> could just roll back.
>
> LONG story short - I have 3 terms left, a web browser, and get plenty:
>
> dselect: /lib/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.3' not found (required by
> /lib/libncurses.so.5)
Do you have libncurses5 out of unstable? You probably want to make
sure that your libc6 and libncurses5 are from the same distribution,
so either upgrade libc6 or downgrade libncurses5.
> type errors anytime I try to do something. The crux of it is, basically,
> php4 depended on a = or < libc6, but it somehow put itself in a broken
> state (even after --force-depends to install the libc6 I did have,
> overwriting a file that was in libdb1-compat) it still has the version
> `GLIBC_2.3` errors.
Errm, this isn't Red Hat; you almost never need a --force option to
dpkg, and especially not --force-depends. Debian package dependencies
try to make sure that things that need to be installed together really
are, and things that confict can't be put together at the same time.
Also, if you override dependencies, APT becomes very unhappy.
> Unfortunately, those errors go all the way to /bin/sh
> - so pretty much all of the pre/post install scripts fail (dpkg still
> works even though apt-get and dselect don't ... i think they're only
> failing because of ncurses, but why is /bin/sh failing!)
Debian's default /bin/sh is bash, and yeah, it depends on curses:
{22} tigertwo% ldd /bin/sh
libncurses.so.5 => /lib/libncurses.so.5 (0x4001c000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x4005c000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x4005f000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)
> I can't believe the machine is so crippled - and yet ssh still works
> (ssh'd to another machine to write this mail), and can't believe there's
> no way to fix it, when I have a working network connection and root.
> Anyone have any suggestions?
You might be able to cheat with respect to the curses and libc6
packages. In particular, something like
cd /tmp
ar x /var/cache/apt/archives/libc6_2.3.1-10_i386.deb
tar xvf data.tar.gz -C /
might get you a somewhat-working libc6, which will make curses happy.
Then run 'dpkg --configure --pending' to get dpkg back into a sane
state, and then 'apt-get install -f' to get a consistent set of
packages installed. Good luck!
--
David Maze dmaze@debian.org http://people.debian.org/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting. Politicking should be illegal."
-- Abra Mitchell
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