Accidently deleted /sbin, howto restore?

eijckron · #1 12th November 2005, 08:35 AM

I accidently deleted the /sbin directory of my FC4 installlation (yes I know how stupid that is :-). The system is still up. Is there any way to restore the content of this directory so I can safely reboot my machine?

Zigzagcom · #2 12th November 2005, 10:58 AM

Is the directory still in the "Trash". That is, having deleted /sbin from within the file-browser.
Then you can drag and drop directory back from where you deleted it from. If you emptied the trash, maybe google can help.
If you have used the command line to delete the directory with the 'rmdir' command, it would usually only do that if there where no files in it.
Otherwise, if you did "rm -fR *.* /sbin" on an ext3 filesystem, oh boy.

eijckron · #3 12th November 2005, 02:03 PM

It was rm -fr /sbin :-(

Zigzagcom · #4 12th November 2005, 02:09 PM

This is not windows...LOL, did 'ya think it was spyware?
...or just messing around. Hope you can backup your file. Try Knoppix, if all else fails.

eijckron · #5 12th November 2005, 02:37 PM

I know it was stupid. I was cleaning up a subdirectory for an oldinstall (/oldhd). I Had the CD in /oldhd and wanted to delete sbin from there. The problem was typing a / in front of sbin :-)

brunson · #6 12th November 2005, 03:01 PM

About the only thing you can do is find another machine and copy /sbin from there.

***Firewing1*** · #7 12th November 2005, 03:09 PM

Yup. Or do a reinstall of ALL packages on your system. That would suck... You'd have to download every single package on your system again, then run
rpm -Uhv ./*.rpm --replacefiles
Best idea is do an Upgrade install of Fedora so you don't lose your /home.
Remeber to backup /etc/ first.
Firewing1

eijckron · #8 12th November 2005, 05:00 PM

Thanks for the ideas. I think I'll try to do an install to another harddrive and then copy over the /sbin directory. Thats probably faster then the rpm trick.

***Firewing1*** · #9 12th November 2005, 08:25 PM

yeah... seriously... lol
The thing is then yo'll also have to install the other programs that put files into /sbin.
eg, usb-utils, smart, and root program.
Firewing1

linmix · #10 12th November 2005, 09:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Firewing1

Yup. Or do a reinstall of ALL packages on your system. That would suck... You'd have to download every single package on your system again, then run
rpm -Uhv ./*.rpm --replacefiles
Best idea is do an Upgrade install of Fedora so you don't lose your /home.
Remeber to backup /etc/ first.
Firewing1

Unless you've used yum to update the system and haven't cleaned out all the rpms. In that case you could back-up /var/cache/yum/* (on cd /dvd or on another partition) and /home (provided it isn't already on another partition) and then do a new install after which you put /var/cache/yum back into place and do a 'yum -y update'. THere'd still be the matter of additional packages you may have added through yuma nd that are not available on the dvd/cd, but you could reinstall those from the yum cache manually.

linmix · #11 12th November 2005, 09:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Firewing1

Yup. Or do a reinstall of ALL packages on your system. That would suck... You'd have to download every single package on your system again, then run
rpm -Uhv ./*.rpm --replacefiles
Best idea is do an Upgrade install of Fedora so you don't lose your /home.
Remeber to backup /etc/ first.
Firewing1

Unless you've used yum to update the system and haven't cleaned out all the rpms. In that case you could back-up /var/cache/yum/* (on cd /dvd or on another partition) and /home (provided it isn't already on another partition) and then do a new install after which you put /var/cache/yum back into place and do a 'yum -y update'. THere'd still be the matter of additional packages you may have added through yuma nd that are not available on the dvd/cd, but you could reinstall those from the yum cache manually.