Arch Linux

marxav

Member

From: Gatineau, PQ, Canada

Registered: 2006-09-24

Posts: 386

[SOLVED] Update of bash broke system

I am using testing repo.  Yesterday, over 100 packages were suddenly available for upgrade.
Considering there were so many, I decided to start upgrading those that I thought were harmless.
In my mind, bash was one of them.  It turned out it was not.

At the moment, my system is unusable. At first, I could not start a terminal.  Error was:

/bin/bash symbol lookup error undefined symbol rl_filename_rewrite.

So I rebooted and that fails.  It refuses to boot and display that same message.

I tried to chroot with install cd as per http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Chroot but then when I do
chroot /mnt/arch /bin/bash I get the same error.

Any suggestion?

Last edited by marxav (2010-01-28 21:41:18)

Allan

Pacman

From: Brisbane, AU

Registered: 2007-06-09

Posts: 11,672

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Update of bash broke system

Oh the joys of partial upgrades....   you need the latest readline.

Edit:  you want "pacman -r /mnt/arch -S readline"

---

PGP Key: F99FFE0FEAE999BD | I develop pacman - buy me a drink!

marxav

Member

From: Gatineau, PQ, Canada

Registered: 2006-09-24

Posts: 386

Re: [SOLVED] Update of bash broke system

I know, I needed a challenge...
Before I rebooted, I tried a downgrade then it complained about readline. 
I guess at the moment, the problem is that I cannot get into the system through either normal boot or chroot.  I am unaware of the pacman -r switch, I will look it up. MTF

Profjim

Member

From: NYC

Registered: 2008-03-24

Posts: 658

Re: [SOLVED] Update of bash broke system

One thing you could do is boot from install CD, then without chrooting instead do something like this (untested):

bsdtar -x -C /mountpointyouwishyoucouldchrootto -f /pathtooldbash.pkg.tar.gz

The old bash pkg file should be in /var/cache/pacman/pkg on your screwed up disk.

You'll have to do that as root, and the permissions may not end up being right. So after doing it, I'd try chrooting which now should work and then re-installing it yet again.

I've bit bitten by this in the past. You always want to look for the readline upgrade when you upgrade bash. Lots of other packages will be broken unless they're rebuilt against the readline upgrade too. It's probably never a good time to do partial updates against [testing], though I do it sometimes. But now is in an _especially_ bad time.

EDIT: oh yeah, Allan's -r switch is much cleaner. I keep thinking I knew every pacman switch. Geez. You could do "pacman -r /mnt/arch -U /pathtooldbash.pkg.tar.gz" if you want to go backwards instead of forwards.

Last edited by Profjim (2010-01-28 15:47:09)

Ramses de Norre

Member

From: Leuven - Belgium

Registered: 2007-03-27

Posts: 1,289

Re: [SOLVED] Update of bash broke system

Grab a live cd, boot it, mount your arch root on /mnt/arch, run Allan's command, reboot. All should be fine now

marxav

Member

From: Gatineau, PQ, Canada

Registered: 2006-09-24

Posts: 386

Re: [SOLVED] Update of bash broke system

OK, for anyone that might run into that problem:
After I boot an install CD I did not have internet connection.  So I did:

ifconfig eth0 10.0.0.5 
route add default gw 10.0.0.1 
vim /etc.resolv.conf and added my nameserver.

After I mount /dev/sda3 to /mnt/arch and ran pacman -r /mnt/arch -S bash readline I was back in business

Awesome!!  Now I am going to pacman -Su the remaining 112 packages.

Last edited by marxav (2010-01-28 21:42:09)