Hi! I'm probably looking more for speculation than a solution to this
problem. Solutions are welcomed, though :-)
I'm running Slackware 3.5. I wanted to try Sybase ASE so I could try to
plug Applixware into it. I got ASE, the docs, and the glibc2 runtime
from Caldera. It was in RPM format, so I got RPM from Sunsite.
I un-tar-gzipped the binary RPM distribution into /. When using the RPM
binary, I got "/bin/sh needed for ..." messages. Thinking it was a
system problem (sh->bash on my system), I got the source code and
recompiled RPM. It installed somewhere in /usr, it worked, and I got
the same error message.
So, I installed the glibc2 runtime and Sybase with rpm's --nodeps
option. Everything installed, and my sybase account couldn't use
/bin/sh. Then, I logged in as a user. "/bin/bash not found." I exited
X as root and tried some user logins. Same thing. I logged out as root
and tried to get back into X. X wasn't found.
I could get pine running, but I couldn't get pppd to run. So, I
rebooted, and now, Linux gives me something like "/etc/rc.d/rc.something
not found." It's the one right after Linux does the read-only test on
the root partition.
I booted from my rescue disks after reading something about RPM screwing
up user permissions. I changed some directories from -rwx------ to
match the -rwxr-xr-x permissions for the other directories in /. I did
the same thing inside /usr and a few other directories. I rebooted to
get the same problems.
I did too much at once. So, which action toasted my Linux
installation? What can I do to prevent it from happening next time?
Thanks in advance, and have fun!
--Michael