Bash not working...

exspasticcomics · 2015-10-05 05:24:32

(First off.. I'm going to apologize from the get-go. It's been awhile since I've had to do anything 'serious' with my linux setup. So, I'm rusty and I think I might of screwed something up bad here. LOL)

It started when I was updating my system (pacman -Syu) and it wasn't cooperating. gegl was giving me strange errors & I saw that it also wanted to update gimp. -I figured there must be some sort of conflict. It uploaded all the files... but, wouldn't install everything because of the error. Just to get a few things installed & narrow down the somewhat long list.. I type 'pacman -S' and began installing several things that way. (i.e. pacman -S bash chromium , etc... etc..) things began to install... but I kept getting this weird error. -Something baout /bin/bash not found nwcurses or something like that. -Then... I couldn't get back into xterminal or anything. It seems like anything that calls bash is giving me grief. I made a bad move and tried restarting my computer. Arch boots up.. I get a couple of processes that fail and then it hangs before it can start up the graphics & I can get into LXDE. I threw in my knoppix disk and that's what I'm using right now. I'm wondering if I reinstalled bash if that'd fix the problem. -Thing is... I'm not even sure how I can run 'pacman -S bash' in my current predicament, Any ideas?

And, Thank you for your time.

Last edited by exspasticcomics (2015-10-05 05:34:55)

jasonwryan · 2015-10-05 05:53:51

Sounds like you screwed up the ncurses update (although, given the paucity of reliable information in the post, that could be wide of the mark).

From the chroot, do a complete update and paste any errors here, don't paraphrase, it doesn't help.

exspasticcomics · 2015-10-05 06:24:29

Thanks for the reply. Yeah,-- All of this caught me pretty off guard & I probably sound foolish. -My apologies. Not sure how to get out of syslinux to a command prompt. My system tries to boot up.. but, gets hung up before I can get to the login screen on the display manager.

Last edited by exspasticcomics (2015-10-05 06:25:56)

jasonwryan · 2015-10-05 06:25:51

Boot from a live medium: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Chroot

Scimmia · 2015-10-05 06:41:24

You're not going to be able to do it chrooting in, you'll have to use pacman --root <mountpoint> from the Arch live disk.

Last edited by Scimmia (2015-10-05 06:41:44)

exspasticcomics · 2015-10-05 06:51:18

I get hung up at 'sudo chroot /mnt/arch /bin/bash' the error being...

chroot: failed to run command `/bin/bash': Exec format error

which is weird... I think knoppix is running in 64. I'm going to try something to make sure. I'll let you know if it works.

exspasticcomics · 2015-10-05 07:07:08

Well... I now get the error I was getting before--

/bin/bash: error while loading shared libraries: libncursesw.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

So... Yeah... Sounds like an ncurses thing. How do I fix it? I'm running knoppix & I'm not sure I have an arch live disk around anymore. (My installation is rather old/ I just moved.) -I might get stuck having to get a new one?

Scimmia · 2015-10-05 07:15:21

See post #5

exspasticcomics · 2015-10-05 07:25:06

So... I have to download a new arch live disk... --Alright. Thanks for all your help.

Trilby · 2015-10-05 11:04:00

Yes, use an archlinux live medium (it doesn't need to be the newest, any will do), and use pacman with the root flag as Scimmia describes.

But in case it's not clear, your original unspecified errors would likely have been very easy to resolve - but you ended up doing several partial upgrades. Please never do that again - it is expected that more often than not, partial upgrades will do serious damage to your system especially when it involves any packages from [core].

exspasticcomics · 2015-10-05 21:00:04

Well, usually before I do 'pacman -Syu' I check the front page of archlinux.org to see if there's any warnings about things like this that might cause issues during an upgrade. -I'm surprised this bash/ncurses thing isn't on there.

Here's where I'm at...

I got a usb drive & have arch live disk on it.

I boot the live disk... & I type:

mkdir /mnt/xxx
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/xxx

then...

pacman -r /mnt/xxx -Su

It won't install everything because it claims I don't have enough space. (free space on the drive is about 24 gigs-- I have more than enough space. -I wonder if this has something to do with the size of the flash drive?)

I know this'll make you scream... But, just to see what happens... I grab something non-vital from the list (In this case Gimp.) and just upgrade that. Gimp requires gegl & gegl02 to upgrade. gegl won't install because it says a bunch of the files in /usr/lib/gegl already exist. The thing that troubles me is... it also says files for '/usr/share/locale/es/LC... (& several others) already exists too. Well, I didn't mess with my locale. it's en. I went & checked everyplace I could think of for that & it's still set correctly to en_us. -I'm not sure if that means something or not.

Still getting the same error too...

/bin/bash: error while loading shared libraries: libncursesw.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Any ideas? & thank everyone for your help.

exspasticcomics · 2015-10-06 00:10:59

Alright-- I think I finally figured it out.

When gegl updated something must of gone wrong & I had a bunch of corrupt files everywhere. The only way I could get bash to behave was to create symlink files in /usr/lib linking a file I made called libncursesw.so.5 to libncursesw.so.6 --not sure if that's a good move or not (if it'll make a mess of future update or not)... but, everything is up and running again without issue.

-Thanks everyone!

Scimmia · 2015-10-06 00:11:06

Exact error messages, not paraphrased.

exspasticcomics · 2015-10-06 00:21:41

Um... No more errors. Just kind of wondering if symlinking a file called ' libncursesw.so.5' to 'libncursesw.so.6' in /usr/lib has the possibility of getting me in trouble on a future update. -But, otherwise.. I'm good. Thank you for your help.

Last edited by exspasticcomics (2015-10-06 00:22:21)

Trilby · 2015-10-06 00:24:31

exspasticcomics wrote:

Just kind of wondering if symlinking a file called ' libncursesw.so.5' to 'libncursesw.so.6' in /usr/lib has the possibility of getting me in trouble on a future update.

Yes. Severe trouble. Far worse than the original situation that you were in that led to this thread.

But so far you have not shown any signs of following the documentation or advice of others here. In fact you seem to be going out of your way to do everything wrong. So I don't think there's any purpose in trying to steer you in the right direction now.

exspasticcomics · 2015-10-06 00:44:51

???-

Um.. scimma told me to get an arch live disk and I read here https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comm … em_update/

about updating from the live disk. Not sure what I did/ where I went wrong. Saw somewhere that symlinking might be bad,- Which is why I'm asking. Tried chrooting like Jason suggested but scimmia said that wasn't going to work. The only thing I see different here is that scimmia said 'pacman --root <mountpoint>' & on the reddit forum they suggested 'pacman -r /mnt -Su' --is that where I went wrong?

I'm listening/ reading up on this.. it's just that this forum isn't the only place I'm looking.

Thanks

Scimmia · 2015-10-06 03:15:33

-r and --root are the same thing.

Where you went wrong is not telling us just what is going on. Instead, you decide to do other things that just get you in deeper.

exspasticcomics · 2015-10-06 07:49:52

Well-- Just for the record. I deleted the symlink to 'libncursesw.so.5' then I went back to the live disk & reinstalled ncurses & bash via the --root command. Everything *seems* to be working without error. I've been doing the linux thing since about slackware 9 or 10. I've never been very good behind the command line (But, I try.) and I just usually search the web... do the reading and trail & error. -It's gotten me this far. I fully realize that a bit of 'late night stupidity' got me into this in the first place & like I said in my first post, I'm rusty behind the command line. (Too much 'real life' lately.) ..Plus.. I babble. LOL

So, unless someone's got a tip for me on stopping further penguin abuse,-- I'll get out of your hair now.

Thanks again, everyone.

Trilby · 2015-10-06 11:56:37

You don't need to know anything about the command line to use it safely. You just need to know yourself. If you don't know what you are doing, don't do it.

The other piece of advice has already been reiterated countless times in this thread: if you want help on these forums, we need to know the actual error messages that result from the actual commands you used.

In 18 posts in this thread nothing at all was revealed about the underlyng problem. Yet you did provide a play by play description of all the horrble things you decided to try to "fix" the unspecifed problem.

Now I may sound harsh, but I assure you, if I didn't care about your progress on archlinux I would not say anything. I would have made some popcorn and sat back and enjoyed the show as a one man wrecking crew destroys a linux system. I suspect this is what I'll do in your next thread if it follows the same pattern.

Arch Linux

#1 2015-10-05 05:24:32

Bash not working...

#2 2015-10-05 05:53:51

Re: Bash not working...

#3 2015-10-05 06:24:29

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