Re: [gentoo-user] What to do when you can't loggin

[Neil Bothwick]

On Wed, 21 Jun 2006 10:47:11 +0100, Paul Stear wrote:

> I am running an ~x86 system and yesterday I did an emerge world, all
> went well until the next time I booted. kdm ran but the screen just had
> a flashing loggin box.  I could not even get another terminal using alt
> F1-F7. So I am faced with not being able to loggin at all.  This raises
> a few questions about my own inadequacies :-
> 1. What is the correct procedure to recover a system in this state?
> What tools do I need?

In this case, all you need to do is boot without X, or SSH in from
another box. As a last resort you could boot a live CD chroot and fix
things.

> 2. I have an rsynced backup on an external usb harddrive, but unless I
> can loggin how can I restore the files from the backup?

By booting from a live CD.

> 3. It appears that a freetype update was the cause of this failure, but
> this information was hard to find on the forum's (I was lucky). I had
> an old installation cd and chroot'ed and emerged the previous version
> of freetype, rebooted and all is well (I hope).

Yes, it was a patch to freetype that caused this. I got bitten too.

> 4. How can an update like this get into ~x86 tree when it plainly
> causes a major problem?

Because ~arch is for testing. A ~ keyword only guarantees that it works
for the ebuild's author, that's why it is called testing, you are the
tester. Had this bug made it through to the stable tree, you would have
cause for complaint.

> I wonder if I should revert to just x86.

If you are not willing to accept the risks and responsibilities of
running a testing system, then the answer is probably "yes".


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Bumper Sticker: If you can read this, you are in phaser range.