Installing a Stage 3 tarball onto an existing system?

The Mountain Man · l33t Joined: 03 Sep 2003 Posts: 643

Through one thing or another, I managed to pretty seriously break my Gentoo. I got it back up and running more or less, but it's still crippled and missing certain critical binaries like "locate" and "libstc++.so.6", so I can't emerge anything. Would it be a really bad idea to dump a Stage 3 tarball onto the system and then "emerge -NDuav world && revdep-rebuild"?
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szczerb · Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2009 1:19 pm Post subject:

You'd overwrite all your configs and stuff...bad idea. I'd suggest getting just the libs you need from another machine so that you can 'emerge -e system'. After that 'emerge -e world' will go smoothly.

The Mountain Man · l33t Joined: 03 Sep 2003 Posts: 643

Ah, O.K. Thanks. I guess I'll have to Google for the needed files since I don't have another machine handy.

I can get coreutils from one of the ../gentoo/distfiles mirrors. Now to find libstc++.so.6

(Oh, the lesson to learn here, folks, is that if you're doing any sort of critical updating on your Gentoo box, don't do it while you're tried, and don't rush. That's how you make mistakes.

)
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NathanZachary · Moderator Joined: 30 Jan 2007 Posts: 2605

Can you get online with this machine? If you can, then all you need to do is manually go to a mirror, download the files, and put them into your /usr/portage/distfiles directory.
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The Mountain Man · l33t Joined: 03 Sep 2003 Posts: 643

Yeah, I can get online. I've downloaded the latest version of coreutils, which should help, but I can't find a copy of libstdc++.so.6

Another idea comes to mind: I notice that tar has an option that reads:

The Mountain Man · l33t Joined: 03 Sep 2003 Posts: 643

If this page is correct then that is indeed what the -k switch does:

The Mountain Man · l33t Joined: 03 Sep 2003 Posts: 643

Well, it seems to have worked (though if anybody else tries it, you'll want to include the "j" switch to maintain permissions: "tar -xvfjk foo"). After running an "emerge -e system" followed by "emerge -e world" I've finally got KDE back up and running so I'm no longer stuck with the basic X windows interface. Things didn't always go perfectly smoothly, and there are a couple of niggling issues that I still have to squash, but at least my system is more or less back in business.
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Clad in Sky · l33t Joined: 04 May 2007 Posts: 888 Location: Germany

Funny you asked the question about the stage 3 just now.

I didn't, I just installed the tarball. Really bad idea *g*.
Thanks for the -k switch. That'll come in handy next time.
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gerard27 · Posted: Sat May 02, 2009 8:57 am Post subject:

If you have a seperate harddisk like a USB harddrive next time make a backup first.
That's what I do.
Gerard.
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To install Gentoo I use sysrescuecd.Based on Gentoo,has firefox to browse Gentoo docs and mc to browse (and edit) files.
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The Mountain Man · l33t Joined: 03 Sep 2003 Posts: 643

gerard27 · Posted: Mon May 04, 2009 12:02 am Post subject:

Your "/" directory.
Gerard.
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To install Gentoo I use sysrescuecd.Based on Gentoo,has firefox to browse Gentoo docs and mc to browse (and edit) files.
The same disk can be used for 32 and 64 bit installs.
You can follow the Handbook verbatim.
http://www.sysresccd.org/Download

The Mountain Man · l33t Joined: 03 Sep 2003 Posts: 643

Oh, right. Wish I had done that before I killed my system. Ah well, it's back up and running now, so I'll remember that for the next time I want to perform some potentially system busting maintenance.
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