On 2008-07-02 11:33 +0200, Jonas Meurer wrote: > I've broken my debian/unstable system by executing as root the command > # srm -r -d /tmp/.*
Ouch. That seems a good command to run before you sell your hard disk. ;-) > I aborted the command after something between 20 and 40 seconds, but > since then, my system behaves strange: Small wonder. > If I try to login as normal user on the console, I get the error > "Unable to cd to '/home/user'" and the login aborts. > > Login as root works without any issues. > > When I try to su to a normal user from root, I get: "Cannot execute > /bin/bash: Permission denied." The permissions for /bin/bash are ok: > -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 797784 2008-05-12 19:00 /bin/bash It's possible that the PAM modules or their configuration became corrupt. > I even tried to add a new user with 'adduser username', which seemed > to work without problems, but if I try to login/su to that new user, > the same errors occur. I already checked for /etc/passwd, /etc/group and > /etc/pam.d being available. > > Additionally several services fail to start, please see below for exact > error messages. > > Next, I rebooted to see whether the system still was able to boot at > all. And indeed, the system booted without issues, except that the > services mentioned below didn't start, and the normal user login still > didn't work as well. That's really surprising, I would not have expected the system to come up at all. > So I started to try to recover the system (I don't have system backups, > I only backup /home): That's bad, you should at least backup /etc. But you know already... > First, I did a 'dpkg-reconfigure' for all installed packages, but as that > didn't change anything, I reinstalled all installed packages: > # packages=$(dpkg -l | grep "^i" |awk '{print $2}') > # apt-get -o Dpkg::Options::="--force-confmiss" --reinstall install $packages Good idea. > That one succeeded for all packages except the ones that contain the > services which don't start anymore, and obviosly the reinstall didn't > fix that. > > So now, i've a system which has all packages reinstalled with the dpkg > option to restore removed configfiles, but still user login and serveral > services fail. > > Do you have any suggestions how to go on with debugging the issue? Maybe > you even discovered similar issues in the past? > > It would be really painful to setup a clean new system and configure it > the way I like, as this system is already several years old and has > serveral individual configurations. > > Now the exact error messages of the services that do fail to start: > > # /etc/init.d/exim4 start > Starting MTA:2008-07-01 20:49:06 Exim configuration error in line 662 of > /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated.tmp: > user mail was not found Could you post the contents of your /etc/passwd? Even if that file exists, it may not contain all users. > exim: could not open panic log - aborting: see message(s) above > Invalid new configfile /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated.tmp, not installing > /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated.tmp to /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated > > # /etc/init.d/gdm start > Starting GNOME Display Manager: gdmgdm[16973]: WARNING: gdm_config_parse: > Authdir /var/lib/gdm does not exist. Aborting. > gdm_config_parse: Authdir /var/lib/gdm does not exist. Aborting. Probably you need to recreate the missing directory. > # /etc/init.d/mysql start > Starting MySQL database server: mysqld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . failed! > > # tail -n5 /var/log/syslog > Jul 1 22:55:25 jonas /etc/init.d/mysql[17210]: 0 processes alive and > '/usr/bin/mysqladmin --defaults-file=/etc/mysql/debian.cnf ping' resulted in > Jul 1 22:55:25 jonas /etc/init.d/mysql[17210]: /usr/bin/mysqladmin: connect > to server at 'localhost' failed > Jul 1 22:55:25 jonas /etc/init.d/mysql[17210]: error: 'Can't connect to > local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2)' > Jul 1 22:55:25 jonas /etc/init.d/mysql[17210]: Check that mysqld is running > and that the socket: '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' exists! > Jul 1 22:55:25 jonas /etc/init.d/mysql[17210]: Does /var/run exist at all? Its absence could explain the failure to start services that want to put files there. OTOH, it is included in base-files, so if you reinstalled that package, it should be there. But subdirectories like exim4 or mysqld could still be missing. > So I rebooted to see whether everything was ok, and indeed the system > booted without issues, only a few services failed to start. Among others > these are avahi, hal, exim4, privoxy, mysql and gdm. But I already > mentioned that above. > > If you have any suggestions, please tell me. I would be really glad to > save my system. One idea would be to install the cruft package and look for missing files. Also, examine /etc for recent files: one file or the other might be truncated by the interrupted srm command. And please post a listing of /etc/pam.d. Sven -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]