[PLUG] OK, now I did it. Deleted /bin

[Rogan Creswick]

On 7/24/06, John Jason Jordan <johnxj at comcast.net> wrote:
> OK, computer is still running, but I'm out of ideas. I still have
> 10 GB unused on the hard disk. I can shut down, make a
> fresh install of Dapper on it, then copy its /bin folder to the
> others. It appears that's the only way I can get /bin back.
> We'll see if Sylpheed can still send an e-mail. If so, I'll wait
> for an hour or so to see if there is a guru on the list with a
> better, simpler suggestion.
>

As has already been pointed out, /dev/hda2 *should* still have a /bin
directory.  However, that may not be critical one way or the other.
I'd suggest booting off an ubuntu64-live disk -- ideally the live cd
that corresponds to the install disk you used to install dapper.  When
that boots you should be able to 1) look at hda2 and hda3 to see which
if any have a a /bin directory. 2) copy a bin directory over to hda2
and/or hda3 from one of three locations: hda2, hda3 or the cd's
filesystem.  (when you boot up with the live cd this will show up as
"/bin", whereas the hda2 bin dir, if it exists will probably be at
"/mnt/hda2/bin" or "/media/hda2/bin" or some such place.)

To do the copy, you need to first find the mounted location of the
destination -- this is the place you need a /bin dir.  Either hda2 or
hda3.  Since I don't know exactly where these will be mounted, or even
if they will be mounted by default, you will have to poke around a
bit.   The first step is to run "mount" and see if they show up.  If
they do, you will see the mount point in the output also.  Let's
assume you want the bin dir on hda3, and hda3 is mounted at /mnt/hda3.

Go to a terminal and run:

sudo cp -a /bin /mnt/hda3

That should restore your bin dir to hda3, and you *should* be able to
reboot into your "workable" 8-gig partition. The next step is to
restore any programs in /dev/hda3's bin dir that were not on the live
cd.  I don't know how to do this :( but I'm sure some one else on here
does..

Once this is all ironed out I'd suggest using a live cd to do the copy
over to the new partition.  (may be worthwhile to format the 60 gig
drive before putting data on it, so you don't get confused about what
has been copied and what was there from the previous partition.)

--Rogan