[plug] Debian base reinstall

[Craig Ringer]

smclevie wrote:
> I do not have apt nor dpkg.  Dpkg has a "subprocess dpkg-split killed by 
> signal (Bus error)" and apt won't even allow 'apt-setup' ...

Uggh. What happened - disk/FS corruption?

> Is it a case of running through the install cd again?

That's what I'd do.

> Is the Debian (Woody) setup cd set going to do junk data on the drive if 
> I 'mount previously initialised partitions'?

I don't think so, but I'd backup anyway.

> As far as I can tell the drives are intact but obviously some base 
> dependencies are now missing....!  The computer is 'running' as normal 
> except I don't have some functionality.
> 
> I am planning to mount all partitions and then 'install base system'.... 
> ( good idea ?? )

Maybe. I'd be very tempted to
	'rm -rf /var /boot /lib /sbin /bin /usr /opt /etc'
and start again, though.

> Will I need to force a re-install??

I don't think so, as the debian installer doesn't really have the 
concept of "upgrade" in the first place.

> I am using Grub (not LILO) does this make any difference?  (Like another 
> unrecognised partition...?)

I used GRUB when I still used Debian, and neve had any trouble. If you 
reinstall, you'll just need to reinstall grub afterwards as the Debian 
installer CD will install LILO on top of GRUB.

> I won't remove perl next time!

Whoops. You know, you can probably just manually unpack the perl .deb, 
drop it into /usr/local (with an appropriate $PATH etc set), then 
force-reinstall the packaged perl. Then again, I've never tried it.

BTW, an irritating - though understandable - little thing about RPM 
based systems that I've run into:

[root at albert root]# ldd /usr/bin/rpm2cpio
         librpm-4.2.so => /usr/lib/librpm-4.2.so (0x004d2000)
         librpmdb-4.2.so => /usr/lib/librpmdb-4.2.so (0x003b2000)
         librpmio-4.2.so => /usr/lib/librpmio-4.2.so (0x00492000)
         libpopt.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpopt.so.0 (0x00280000)
         libelf.so.1 => /usr/lib/libelf.so.1 (0x00241000)
         libbeecrypt.so.6 => /usr/lib/libbeecrypt.so.6 (0x00215000)
         librt.so.1 => /lib/tls/librt.so.1 (0x005a5000)
         libpthread.so.0 => /lib/tls/libpthread.so.0 (0x009b8000)
         libbz2.so.1 => /usr/lib/libbz2.so.1 (0x001c1000)
         libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/libc.so.6 (0x0072e000)
         /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x001fd000)

... so if RPM is broken and you're trying to fix things, you need RPM. 
As librpm* depend on threading, you need working threading too. If 
you've just overwritten libpthread.0 with one built against uClibc 
(*blush*) this is annoying. It'd be really nice to have either a static 
rpm2cpio or one that uses built-in simplified .rpm support.

Craig Ringer