From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu May 20 06:07:57 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2F9C3106566C for ; Thu, 20 May 2010 06:07:57 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk) Received: from smtp.infracaninophile.co.uk (gate6.infracaninophile.co.uk [IPv6:2001:8b0:151:1::1]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 712EA8FC19 for ; Thu, 20 May 2010 06:07:56 +0000 (UTC) Received: from seedling.black-earth.co.uk (seedling.black-earth.co.uk [81.187.76.163]) (authenticated bits=0) by smtp.infracaninophile.co.uk (8.14.4/8.14.4) with ESMTP id o4K67rRt065265 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-CAMELLIA256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO); Thu, 20 May 2010 07:07:54 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk) Message-ID: <4BF4D1B9.8010005@infracaninophile.co.uk> Date: Thu, 20 May 2010 07:07:53 +0100 From: Matthew Seaman Organization: Infracaninophile User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.1.9) Gecko/20100317 Thunderbird/3.0.4 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Peter Clark References: <4BF44808.8030602@mtmary.edu> In-Reply-To: <4BF44808.8030602@mtmary.edu> X-Enigmail-Version: 1.0.1 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Virus-Scanned: clamav-milter 0.96 at lucid-nonsense.infracaninophile.co.uk X-Virus-Status: Clean X-Spam-Status: No, score=2.0 required=5.0 tests=DKIM_ADSP_ALL,SPF_FAIL autolearn=no version=3.3.1 X-Spam-Level: ** X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.3.1 (2010-03-16) on lucid-nonsense.infracaninophile.co.uk Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Livefs/fixit X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 20 May 2010 06:07:57 -0000 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 19/05/2010 21:20:24, Peter Clark wrote: > I have a amd64 8.0-RELEASE-P2 FreeBSD box. I was building a spam/av > gateway. Something has happened and there seems to be some OS > corruption. I am not sure what did it but symlinks all over the system > seem to be gone. Links like /home pointing at /usr/home. The data is > still there in /usr/home/user_blah but the link pointing there is gone. > There could be more issues that I have not discovered yet. I would like > to repair the base os from the 8.0 DVD. I believe I should use the > livecd/fixit method. Is this the right way to go about doing this? Are > there some concise instructions for this? Will this affect the installed > ports, ie. things like getting rid of all the configs in /usr/local/etc, > rc.conf, passwd, /etc/groups ? I imagine I will need to reinstall all > the ports like one would do after a buildworld. You should be able to fix this without needing to use a livecd, or overwriting the installation currently on your drive. So long as you can get the system up to at least single user mode, and mount all the partitions, you can build and reinstall the system from source. Follow the instructions here: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/makeworld.html You may need to install the system sources -- you can get them from the installation media, but it's more common to use csup(1). I'm pretty sure you could use freebsd-update(8) (if that's your preferred update mechanism) to achieve the same effect, but I don't know exactly what you'ld have to do to force it to reinstall anything damaged. Hmmm... if what is happened is that some rogue process has deleted all of the symbolic links on your system, then the worst problem you'll have is shared libraries not working correctly. Most of the rest of the symlinks in the base system are to do with man pages or locale data, which you can probably survive without, at least for a while. You'll also need to fix any installed ports: the simplest way to do that is to force re-install any of your ports where 'pkg_info -g portname' indicates there may be a problem. Cheers, Matthew - -- Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 7 Priory Courtyard Flat 3 PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Ramsgate Kent, CT11 9PW -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.14 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAkv00bkACgkQ8Mjk52CukIy2GACeM+UFjsp8DvWrlwyvZLJd+17t YRgAoI2M8Lu0aUKuF0rerQreVwCazXs0 =cACK -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----