[arch-general] Glibc 2.16.0-2 in testing killed my system.

[Tom Gundersen]

On Sat, Jul 7, 2012 at 3:42 PM, fredbezies <fredbezies at gmail.com> wrote:
> I upgraded a few minutes ago my archlinux + testing installation. As I
> cannot install glibc (because of some AUR software which had links or
> binary in /lib), I made the mistake of forcing installation. My system
> is dead. I will try repairing using archboot on an USB key.

This is expected behavior. It is good you mention this on the list, to
remind everyone that you should never use --force unless you really,
really know exactly what is going to happen.

In this case glibc moved from /lib to /usr/lib. The upgrade should
have replaced /lib by a symlink to /usr/lib. This is necessary to make
the linker keep working. However, since you had some stuff from AUR
still in /lib this did not work. The correct solution would have been
to move that stuff out of the way, so that the upgrade could continue
normally.

Since you used --force, however, pacman ignored the fact that the
symlink could not be created and basically hosed your system.

It should be simple enough to fix though: mount your root from a
rescue system, empty /lib manually and replace it with a symlink to
/usr/lib. Assuming I guessed correctly at what exactly happened that
is.

Cheers,

Tom