[Cialug] HELP! I removed libc6!

[cialug@cialug.org]

On Wed, Dec 01, 2004 at 10:10:48PM -0600, Bailey, Jonathan C wrote:
> Gah. I tried upgrading libc6. Then I decided to go back to the old version. Problem is I figured I could do dpkg -r libc6 and apt-get install libc6. Problem is that now nothing runs since it was linked to the libc. Help!
>

I've never been in this situation before, so take the following advice with a grain (or perhaps a bucket) of salt. . .

If I did find myself in such a situation, I would attempt to boot to a bootable CD such as Knoppix or whatever is closest to the distro you are running (I assume it is Debian-based, since you are using dpkg, but these days that's a big assumption).  Then I would scour the documentation for dkpg to see if there are command line options to give an alternative target for the installation of the package.  Craft a command to install libc6 to the mounted hard drive of your "libc6-less" system and fire away!

Now, if this is a critical production machine, you should probably make a backup of all the important stuff before you go pointing dpkg at it.  If there isn't anything critical on it, just back up what you don't want to lose (kinda the same thing, I guess).

Sorry I can't give more details, as I've not had this exact problem before.  I have been in similar situations and usually you can get yourself out with some sort of bootable distro or recovery disk.

later,
kristau