Stage3 instal,I dont want to loose my apps and cfg(FINISHED)

zxy · Last edited by zxy on Wed Oct 25, 2006 3:31 am; edited 1 time in total

I broke my system while upgrading binutils and glibc, and I made it even worse while trying to repair it. On the end I came to the point where I could emerge -e system, but not glibc and I can't downgrade it.

Now I think of making a fresh install. I dont want to lose my configuration files in /etc and I want the same programs installed as I had before.

Currently I can boot grub, and kernel loads and disks get checked (i have to repair my raid1 boot partition - but it works) somewhere little later computer restarts.

I guess I have to copy over stage3 and do sort of a fresh install

Is there a way to preserve info about installed software and the stuff in /etc and other places on filesystem.

Any other ideas would be helpful too.
_________________
Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.
Lao Tzu

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Oct 24, 2006 9:14 am Post subject:

zxy,

You need to preserve /etc/ and your world file to keep you global settings and /home/<user> for local settings.

There may be a litle more you can do by way of rescue too.
Does the machine reboot at the same place every time ?
If its past the Entrining Runlevel 3, press I ... do the press 'I' and control startup by hand. If its not got that far, boot to the grub splash screen, press 'e' for edit and add init=/bin/bash to the end of the kernel line. That will drop you into a root shell with absolutely nothing running. You can poke about and start things manually from there to deterine whats broken.

As a last ditch recovery, you can obtain binary packages for your arch and untar them to / (root) to fix your roken ones, even if you cannot use emerge. The liveCD can be used for that.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

zxy · Posted: Tue Oct 24, 2006 9:50 am Post subject:

Thanks,

I do backups, but I have made them for data only. The next thing is a rsync mirror on a separate partition for /. :idea:

_________________
Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.
Lao Tzu

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Oct 24, 2006 10:06 am Post subject:

zxy,

What do you need ?
I have AMD k6-2, P3, Athlon-xp and sparc binaries I can donate.
The k6-2 stuff runs on later AMD CPUs and the P3 suits P4 CPUs too, long enough to get you going to build your own.
k6-2 has a i586 CHOST, so that can be a complication.

Another alternative is to make a chroot in a file, unpack a stage 3 there, emerge gentoolkit and quickpkg the things you need to get going again.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

zxy · Posted: Wed Oct 25, 2006 3:25 am Post subject:

I'm on amd64. Thanks anyway.

1 day of burning the right livecd, backing up, etc... I have had enough. Making a new clean install.

I guess I'll make system backups in the future, too.
_________________
Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.
Lao Tzu