[CentOS] Yum update corrupted something badly - can only get access through SSH terminal or Webmin

[Toby Bluhm]

Dan Roberts wrote:
> Ok - something truly bad appears to have happened.    Yes, I will  
> concede that cycling the system was a bad thing - but after two hours  
> it should have returned from the update, still I was bad.
> 
> There are indeed updates that it wants - and I went back to the site  
> to get them, but then things continue to show up as missing.
> # rpm -Uvh --force rpm-4.4.2-48.el5.i386.rpm
> error: Failed dependencies:
> 	librpm-4.4.so is needed by rpm-4.4.2-48.el5.i386
> 	librpmbuild-4.4.so is needed by rpm-4.4.2-48.el5.i386
> 	librpmdb-4.4.so is needed by rpm-4.4.2-48.el5.i386
> 	librpmio-4.4.so is needed by rpm-4.4.2-48.el5.i386
> 	popt = 1.10.2 is needed by rpm-4.4.2-48.el5.i386
> 
> Clearly I have a pretty big hole here.  Yes I have been spoiled by yum  
> and rpm.  Years ago I use to command line build, make and install  
> everything - but dropped that habit in favor of the ease of yum.
> 
> Are there are set of core files that seem reasonable to pull and  
> install -

You could try using rpm2cpio to get the package files back down on disk.

Download all rpms you need to the machine. Probably the 5.2 versions as 
others have said.

Boot rescue media, let it find & mount your partitions.
run
  cd /mnt/sysimage
  rpm2cpio package.rpm > package.rpm.cpio
  cpio -idmv < package.rpm.cpio

Do that with rpm, rpm-libs, rpm-python, popt, whatever else seems hammered.

May not hurt much if you're at your last solution - rebuild.


-- 
tkb