Removed glibc package, royally screwed up system

[Workaphobia]

I think I just won the darwin award of computers. In an attempt to upgrade to a slightly higher version of the glibc rpm, I executed "rpm -e glibc-2.3.3-20mdk --nodeps". When I tried to install glibc-2.3.3-21mdk, I found that the rpm command had been removed, along with ls, and a ton of other critical system utilities. X was still functioning, but I think the moment I restart it'll go kablooie as well. I can't even log in from the console.

Is there a way to reinstall the rpm from a livecd? Or without the actual rpm command?

[paxnoctis]

Never done this myself, but my guess is that you prolly fubarred RPM.

My suggestion is to download the source package and try putting it in that way. You might have to build it on another system if the development environment is screwed up.

Alternatively, you could try the package manager and see if you can put it back that way (menu->System->Configuration->Packaging->Install Software), but I rather doubt this'll work.

~Pax

[Workaphobia]

I don't dare boot up into the local operating system until I fix this from a live cd. Unfortunately, knoppix doesn't use RPMs, and I can't read the source tarball from usbstick since it's kernel 2.4 not 2.6 (I get an error like "sda1 is an invalid block device" or something). I can't mess around with the options or the kernel version because then it won't boot at all on my hardware for whatever reason. And I also don't know how to set up eth0 to work under knoppix, so I can't connect to the internet to get the tarball that way. I do however have the rpm file on the harddrive. Mandrake Move would be a much better solution since it natively supports RPMs, but it won't boot - no matter what I try, every time I get "Could not mount compressed loopback". If anyone knows how to fix this error, I think it'd help a great deal.

[jeremy1701]

Maybe try putting in the MDK disk a perform an upgrade?

Jeremy