libc6 is missing. Can I recover?

[jsuisdaccord]

I tried to remotely convert a Kanotix installation to Debian stable (etch) with "apt-get dist-upgrade". At some point, libc6 was removed and everything failed from there. But I still have the SSH session in Konsole and there is busybox on the server. So I linked several basic utilities like ls, mv, cp, rm, ln to busybox.

Then I managed to build wget-static and put it onto the server using *lots* of "echo -ne" to transfer the bytes of the file contents to the Konsole terminal. Thanks to dcop, I don't have to strain myself by clicking the middle mouse button thousands of times

After wget-static, I can transfer files I want to the server more easily, like strace-static, libraries, etc.

Then I was stuck. I don't know where to go from here. I've tried copying /lib/libc-2.3.6.so and the /lib/libc.so.6 symlink, also libdl. But strace still shows me that even execve()-ing basic utilities produces ENOENT.

Can I recover? Or must I just give up and reinstall Debian from scratch?

[jsuisdaccord]

Here's the output of strace btw. Can't include it in the first post because this forum limits post size to 1000 characters?

# strace-static /bin/date
execve("/bin/date", ["/bin/date"], [/* 18 vars */]) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
dup(2)                                  = 3
fcntl64(3, F_GETFL)                     = 0x8002 (flags O_RDWR|O_LARGEFILE)
fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFCHR|0620, st_rdev=makedev(136, 0), ...}) = 0
mmap2(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb7f34000
_llseek(3, 0, 0xbfe24e90, SEEK_CUR)     = -1 ESPIPE (Illegal seek)
write(3, "strace: exec: No such file or di"..., 40strace: exec: No such file or directory
) = 40
close(3)                                = 0
munmap(0xb7f34000, 4096)                = 0
exit_group(1)                           = ?
Process 5794 detached

[iwanabeguru]

i think the reinstall is easier and faster than recovering the system