Re: Really stupid use of cleanlinks
On 06 Aug 2003, Joerg Johannes wrote:
> On Wednesday 06 August 2003 16:56, Anthony Campbell wrote:
> > Never do this!
> >
> > I just ran cleanlinks on my root directory; really stupid thing to
> > do!
> >
> > Lots of things were deleted which should not have been and I don't
> > know how long it will take to get things back working; only just
> > restored ppp. Possibly a new installation will be required?
> >
>
> Hi Anthony
>
> As I understand the manpage, it should only remove empty dirs and
> dangling symlinks. And it spits out a list of what it deletes. Do you
> have this list saved to a file? So you should be able to see what was
> deleted, and judge if it was a good or a bad idea.
>
> joerg
>
> --
> Gib GATES keine Chance!
>
Yes, this is what it says and in fact I think I used it previously
without problems. I ran it as root, starting at /. What happened was
that it removed a number of empty directories in /var that were actually
needed (mainly related to apt and tex) and also removed /usr/bin/X11
which is a symlink to /usr/X11R6/bin and is pointed to by /etc/X11/X, so
that X would not start. The modem also would not work, I can't remember
why (something to do with /dev/ttyS0).
You're right; I should have saved a list to file but I didn't. However,
I have another computer which has a similar though not identical file
structure and by comparing the two I was able to restore things pretty
much to what it was previously and as far as I can see everything is
working again.
I do think the man file for cleanlinks should include a warning. I
certainly shan't use it again.
AC
--
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