[aclug-L] Re: File too short

[Jeff Vian <jvian10@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

John Goerzen wrote:

>On Tue, Feb 03, 2004 at 11:26:55PM -0600, bbales wrote:
>  
>
>>I scp'd some files to my wife's machine and one of them was a link to another 
>>file, which was not on the target machine.  Linux locked up and won't boot.  
>>I get a kernel panic:  
>>init: error loading shared libraries:  libc.6.so:   file too short
>>init: kernel panic:  attempting to kill init
>>
>>The boot disk I made won't get it going.  
>>    
>>
>
>OK, you are pretty close to being totally hosed, but fear not, recovery
>is possible.  (Take this from someone that was even closer than you a
>couple weeks ago <g>)
>
>Your problem is with the C library, libc.  This is not part of the
>kernel, but almost every single program on the system (including the
>likes of ls) requires it to run.  So no boot disk or chroot will work
>because they are just using the same file as everything else.
>
>However, install/rescue disks that have a Linux environment of their own
>should be able to help you out.  You will want to boot off one of these
>and repair the damage.
>
>The files in question reside in /lib.  You should have (at least) two
>files, like this:
>
>-rw-r--r--    1 root     root      1244004 Jan 20 11:29 libc-2.3.2.so
>lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           13 Jan 27 12:16 libc.so.6 ->
>libc-2.3.2.so
>
>That is, you will have a regular file named libc-(something) and a file
>named libc.so.6.  If you are really lucky, your only problem is
>libc.so.6.  You can rm libc.so.6, and then re-link it -- in this
>example, the command would be:
>
>ln -s libc-2.3.2.so libc.so.6
>
>If you are not really lucky, your libc is messed up.  You will have to
>re-install it from somewhere.  Knoppix may be a good way to go; you
>could probably at least copy the file from /lib on the Knoppix
>environment.
>
>  
>
>>knoppix can't get to it.
>>    
>>
>
>That is really strange, and I suspect that it's not actually the case;
>Knoppix may not mount it for you automatically, but I'd be quite
>surprised if it couldn't see it.  The only reason I could think of for
>that is if you're using an exotic filesystem of some sort -- but even
>then, I think Knoppix supports most filesystems.
>
>You mentioned you had a working chroot... use it to cat the file
>/etc/fstab on your system, and note where "/" is mounted from.  Then, in
>Knoppix, try some commands like this:
>
>mkdir /foo
>mount /dev/hda4 /foo
>
>(Replace /dev/hda4 with the path to your root partition from fstab).
>Now:
>
>cp /lib/libc* /foo/lib
>
>  
>
This will not work.   For each link you will get an actual file.

Must be done as
   cp -p --preserve=links /lib/libc* /foo/lib
in order to preserve the links.

Or done as  tar and then untar so ALL atributes are retained.

>Then, go into /foo/lib and make sure the link is correct like I
>mentioned above.  Finally:
>
>cd /
>umount /foo
>
>  
>
>>Tried to upgrade with same cd (RH7.2) - it did the upgrade in about 10 
>>minutes, but didn't change anything.  Still kernel panic
>>    
>>
>
>It probably looked at the RPM database and concluded that the version of
>libc it was going to install is the same as the one on its CD.  You
>might want to try an actual newer version of RedHat... Or, if you can
>find the RPMs on the CD, try a command like this:
>
>rpm --root /sys/image -i libc.rpm
>
>  
>
>>Everything but swap is on one partition and I'd sure like to save her /home 
>>directory.
>>    
>>
>
>If all else fails, I can give you instructions on copying that out from
>the rescue environment.
>
>  
>
>>Any ideas how to remove the offending piece of a file?
>>    
>>
>
>A couple :-)
>
>-- John
>
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>  
>

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