techniques to fix damaged systems

[Dr. Michael J. Chudobiak]

Hi all,

One of my F9 systems experienced a utility power failure, and now 
non-root users can't log in. Googling based on the errors suggests that 
some critical library file has probably become corrupted. Could be 
anything, really.

In cases like this I usually do

rpm -qa | xargs yumdownloader
rpm -Uvh --force *.rpm

to re-install every single rpm. In theory, it should end up pretty much 
in the same state. It's worked well before, anyway.

Is this the slickest method to rescue a limping system? Are there less 
hacky methods? I could re-install from cd/dvd or a revisor iso, but that 
seems to increase the odds of clicking the wrong button and overwriting 
my data...

Tips welcome!


- Mike