Unmerged BASH! Can't login any more. Help!

[DefenceMinister]

I was trying to emerge portage so I could upgrade gnome. When I ran into the bug, where you need to emerge a different version of bash.

I went along being the newbie as I am and thought the unmerging the current bash and then emerging the new one would slow my problems.

Wrong, I no longer have bash and I can't login to the machine. I am writing this on a live CD.

Is there anything I can do to get bash back?

[Darksurf]

yeah, that sux. Don't feel bad. Its happened to all of us. Even me, and I've used linux for over 8 years.
Do you have loop3 or 3.4f ? There is an upgrade feature that comes on the live disc. you can just act like you're
going to install it again, and it will come up asking if you want to upgrade. just say yes, and upgrade. it will put back all
the original files on the HD, but you won't losing any files if you have them.

OR

You can open up a terminal then type "su" and hit enter then type in "root" for the password.
then make sure you mount that hard drive partition (which ever one that was / ) and then
type "chroot {/path/to/drive}"

EXAMPLE: chroot /media/sda1

then equo install bash.

That should help.

[DefenceMinister]

Thank you for the help Darksurf.

I do have 3.4f however I did give the chroot method a go, I was unable to mount my root dir.

After selecting the upgrade option, I am asked to selected from 3 different types.

Normal: Missing packages removed

6th sence: keep apps and manage conflits.

Rescue: Reinstalls everything (very slow!!)

What do you think?

[Darksurf]

I've used the 6th sense one before and I like it. Its very useful, but takes a looong time. its an over night deal.

[chickpea]

Hmm, not sure since your old root partition wouldn't mount but this may be an option:

http://wiki.sabayonlinux.org/index.php? ... ecover_GCC

That is for GCC (gnu C compiler), but just change the command from gcc to bash and it should work.

Like I said, requires the ability to actually mount your old root partition, which from your post seems like it didn't work. This also leads me to believe that you did other nastiness to your install other than just uninstalling bash. /dev/sda1 (or whatever root was) should still mount on the livedvd even with bash gone.

It may be that even the upgrade won't work because the livedvd needs to mount your harddrive partitions to install/upgrade packages.

EDIT: Forgot to tell you something sorry

[deathguppie]

Heh.. this is funny.. I actually have killed my baselayout before, and it just took a little thought to fix it.

Your situation is actually an easy fix.

• 1: boot into your sabayon install CD, and hit ALT-F1 (you should be logged in as root)
  2: mount your hard drive
  3: copy /bin/bash to /"my"/"mounted-hard-dirve/bin/bash (where /"my"/"mounted-hard-drive" is your root partition on your hard drive)
  4: unmount , exit the install CD and reboot into your normal sabayon
  5: DON'T LOG IN TO YOUR DESKTOP! hit ALT-F1 and then log in as root. the type binmerge bash
  6:reboot

... and that should get you going in about 10 minutes tops..