repair v.7 installation

[Ivan Voras]

PJ wrote:
> I believe that my installation should be salvageable but I do not know
> how to phrase my search question.
> Here is the problem:
> Apparently due to some connector problem in the computer one or some
> files were damaged. I ran a regenerating program on the disk and all
> sectors are readable.
> How can I locate the problem files and repair or reinstall them without
> damaging other files?

Try reading all the files on the drive, something like

> find / -exec cat "{}" > /dev/null ";"

See if any files error out.

> From trying to boot the system, it appears that the problem is related
> to the login files: I boot to safe mode and get the logon prompt which
> is not accepted. I then get to the single user mode and can read the

Boot to a single-user mode and see if /etc/passwd and /etc/master.passwd
are ok. If so, regenerate the databases (easiest way is to run vipw).

> contents of the root (top or main) directory and subdirectories.
> The command "df" returns "-70016" under Avail and "104%" under Capacity,
> Mounted on / .

This doesn't necessarily mean there's an error. If you filled the file
system past its reserved space limit, it's normal to get negative
available bytes and over 100% usage. See also if you have a /lost+found
directory.

> Or is it possible to reinstall the system from the installation CD? I
> would like to avoid having to reinstall all the programs that run on
> this local development server - Apache, Samba, Cups, php, pstgresql, etc.

It is possible, with care, to reinstall the system from the CD media,
and keep all user settings. /usr/local/* will not be touched in any case
when performing an upgrade.


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