On 2023-04-28 at 20:46, Jeremy Ardley wrote: > On 29/4/23 08:25, Maureen L Thomas wrote: > >> I am 72 and have forgotten a few things. I looked up debian/var and >> was told I could delete /var/log/ >> >> and /var/tmp/ and /var/cores/.
I'd guess that this was *probably* meant as a direction to delete *files from inside* those directories. Deleting the directories themselves, or even deleting their contents wholesale, can - as you've discovered - create a problematic circumstance. >> I left cores alone and deleted the other two. Now I cannot burn a >> backup, download files and even go to web sites from my nord vpn >> which was working great until I deleted the above files. I really >> want to upgrade to debian 11. I am using debian 10, on a Lonovo all >> in one and have had no problems. I followed the directions for var >> that I found and now have a screwed up machine. Is there any help >> available. I was thinking of upgrading online but don't want to >> loose my data. Please help this old lady. >> >> > Deleting /var/log etc is at best unhelpful. > > I can't think of any procedure that would require deleting those > directories. Perhaps someone was fooling with you? > > Without knowing what else you have done or why, it's probably a good > idea to recreate the directories > > cd /var > > mkdir log > > mkdir tmp That won't necessarily bring back the correct directory permissions, or any needed subdirectory structure under these two locations. I'm not *positive* that this won't break anything, but I think the safest thing to do would probably be to reinstall the 'base-files' package, which can *probably* still be done - even on a system with those directories missing - with 'dpkg -i' from the copy in /var/cache/apt/archives/. That should, I think, bring back both directories with any needed permissions. It will not, however, re-create any subdirectories (e.g. under /var/log/) which were created by other packages; for that, you'd have to reinstall those packages as well. Given that one of the directories on my own system is /var/log/apt/, it's not impossible that much of the package-management system may not work (fully) correctly until you've identified and reinstalled the correct packages. -- The Wanderer The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
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