FS#35645 - Updating 'filesystem' breaks just about everything

Attached to Project: Community Packages
Opened by Andrej Podzimek (andrej) - Tuesday, 04 June 2013, 17:28 GMT
Last edited by Dave Reisner (falconindy) - Tuesday, 04 June 2013, 17:54 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category Packages
Status Closed
Assigned To No-one
Architecture All
Severity Critical
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 1
Private No

Details

Description:

This howto is a recipe for disaster: https://www.archlinux.org/news/binaries-move-to-usrbin-requiring-update-intervention/

Expected outcome: updated system
Actual outcome: completely broken system where no commands can be run

What happens:
1) The first two steps work just fine.
2) On the ultimate pacman -Su, pacman freezes on the free space check.
3) There is no /bin any more, starting anything from /usr/bin leads to "no such file or directory" messages, although "echo *" shows all the files as if they were present.
4) Nothing helps, no matter how many root terminals you have. The problem is that /usr/bin is probably filled with invalid symlinks and you cannot even run 'find' to look for the files whether they have been moved somewhere.

Steps to reproduce: Just try to upgrade your system as usual.
This task depends upon

Closed by  Dave Reisner (falconindy)
Tuesday, 04 June 2013, 17:54 GMT
Reason for closing:  Works for me
Comment by Doug Newgard (Scimmia) - Tuesday, 04 June 2013, 17:39 GMT
Freeze on the space check means you didn't follow the instructions and mount all of the autofs partitions.

Comment by Andrej Podzimek (andrej) - Tuesday, 04 June 2013, 17:45 GMT
I have only one 'autofs' equivalent, the x-systemd.automount on /boot, but I'm pretty sure that must have got mounted during the two initial steps, simply because also the kernel got updated...

However, now I cannot cd into /boot and it looks as if it was not mounted any more. (The only way to investigate this now is 'echo *' and 'cd', because no commands are available.)

Where can I find the files from /usr/bin? That directory is obviously filled with invalid symlinks (echo * shows them, but ./something says "file not found"). If I can find the binaries, then I can (try to) fixe this somehow. But that can't be done without ls, ps, mount and the usual commands...
Comment by Dave Reisner (falconindy) - Tuesday, 04 June 2013, 17:54 GMT
Why would /usr/bin be filled with invalid symlinks? Sounds more like your linker isn't found.

Nothing interesting (or new) here.

Loading...