unbelievably stupid mistake - i broke /usr/lib need help

[Patrick Boutilier]

Alastair McKinley wrote:
> Peter Skensved wrote:
> 
>>   I would start by backing up /root, /boot, /etc and /var
>> plus anything installed in /usr/local and /home . Next get a list of
>> all installed RPMs ( rpm -qa | sort  or  rpm -a --qf "%{NAME}\n" | sort )
>> and save them somewhere. With that information you can probably 
>> reconstruct
>> your laptop if everything fails ( this assumes you always install 
>> binaries
>> from RPM files and stuff from random tar files in /usr/local )
>>
>>  Once you have done that run  rpm -Va  and save the output. This
>> will give you a list of missing files. Try installing the missing
>> ones with  rpm -Uv --force  . If that works then heck for .rpmnew files
>> and try reconstructing any munged configuration files.
>>
>> I've successfully done the above with a really clobbered file system 
>> on a laptop.
>>
>>                                                   peter
>> ----
>>
>> Peter Skensved                          Email : peter at SNO.Phy.QueensU.CA
>> Dept. of Physics,
>> Queen's University,
>> Kingston, Ontario,
>> Canada
>>
>>  
>>
> Hi Peter,
> 
> Thanks for your advice.  I managed to install enough libraries manually 
> to get rpm up and running again.
> 
> What will the rpm -Uv --force command actually do? 

Reinstall the RPM (files as well) even though the RPM is already 
installed according to the RPM database.


  I looked at the
> output of rpm -Va and it was shocking, it took about 3 minutes to finish!
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Alastair
> 
> 
> 
>