On Mon, 2008-07-21 at 13:18 +0100, Matthew Macdonald-Wallace wrote: > Hi All, > > Quick quiz for you - a friend of mine just tried to update/upgrade his > Ubuntu server (running X) using the update manager - it failed halfway > through upgrading locales and now most of /var/lib is missing. > > Anyone know if I can get this system back from the dead (I can get a > command prompt and log in as root) or does it need a reinstall? > > TIA, > > M. > -- > Matthew Macdonald-Wallace > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://www.truthisfreedom.org.uk/ > > Matthew,
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news to your friend, but I think the simplest way of recovering after losing the contents /var/lib would be to do a reinstall. There may be ways to recover it, but I don't think it would be easy, and /var/lib contains a lot of important information (eg, /var/lib/dpkg keeps a record of every package installed on your machine, and what files belong to them). I have seen people mention scripts on the forums to attempt to recover package information in /var/lib/dpkg, but I'm not sure how well this technique would work. I would be more concerned about how /var/lib was lost in the first place though. Does your friend remember what happened? Loss of something as critical as the contents of /var/lib is pretty bad! Cheers Chris
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