From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1NgM2Q-0001Vk-2x for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Sat, 13 Feb 2010 17:44:14 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 43E9EE076E; Sat, 13 Feb 2010 17:43:56 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail.muc.de (colin.muc.de [193.149.48.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CF833E076E for ; Sat, 13 Feb 2010 17:43:55 +0000 (UTC) Received: (qmail 16147 invoked by uid 3782); 13 Feb 2010 17:43:55 -0000 Received: from acm.muc.de (pD9E2236A.dip.t-dialin.net [217.226.35.106]) by colin2.muc.de (tmda-ofmipd) with ESMTP; Sat, 13 Feb 2010 18:43:53 +0100 Received: (qmail 2440 invoked by uid 1000); 13 Feb 2010 17:51:05 -0000 Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2010 17:51:05 +0000 To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] How should I clean up my broken system? Message-ID: <20100213175105.GB1783@muc.de> References: <20100212195529.GD1560@muc.de> <201002130927.15466.alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <201002130927.15466.alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.9i X-Delivery-Agent: TMDA/1.1.5 (Fettercairn) From: Alan Mackenzie X-Primary-Address: acm@muc.de X-Archives-Salt: e8eb9751-fa39-4819-b463-90606977817c X-Archives-Hash: aa9a8a9d60957cf5a032a0c43cfa3e59 Hi, Alan, On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 09:27:15AM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: > On Friday 12 February 2010 21:55:29 Alan Mackenzie wrote: > > As reported in other threads, my new PC had a broken RAM stick in it. > > As a result, an unknown proportion of installed binaries are flaky. > > One non-functioning binary is probably GCC. > > What I'd like to do is reinstall every binary, yet without erasing > > any configuration info, whose creation was so arduous. > > Where does portage keep it's list of installed packages? What do I > > have to do to persuade portage it has _no_ installed packages before > > doing 'rm -rf *' in /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin? > > Has anybody any other tips to offer me for this operation? > First get a working compiler installed. There are many ways, here's > what I think is the easiest: > Boot into a Gentoo LiveCD, chroot into your install, and emerge -k the gcc > tarball on the CD. > Reboot into the actual install, synce the portage tree and > emerge -e world > That will rebuild everything, including gcc. Thanks! In the end, I just used the gcc I had on the system anyway; it wasn't broken. I first did 'emerge -e gcc', which took an hour, then did 'emerge -e world', which took ~2 hours 30 mins. I was being a bit paranoid. The reason I "gave up" on the installation CD was I failed to find out how to start my LVM2 voluble logics, or whatever they're called. I'm now back on track, setting up my PC. Thanks! > The paranoid might want to emerge gcc itself on it's own first so that > rebuilding world is done with the same gcc version as what it will > become (gcc is not built first when you rebuild world, all sort of > toolchain tools and parsers are earlier in the list). Personally, I > don't do that - there is an actual chance that using an old compiler to > build a new compiler may lead to incompatibility issues, but the risk > is extremely small and rare, and it's never bitten me. There was that apocryphal tale of the origianl Unix hacker who hardwired a backdoor login into the system, and hacked cc to _keep_ inserting the backdoor each time the system was built, and to keep this hack in cc each time cc was compiled. Whew! > -- > alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).