Linux Desktop Hacks

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Chapter 9, Administration and Automation

#84 Recover from Debian Disaster

HACK

HACK

#84

Recover from Debian Disaster Hack #84

Restore your Debian system from even the most seemingly unrecoverable

disaster.

We all make mistakes, but the worst accident on a Debian system (or any

Debian-based system, such as Knoppix) is one that causes you to lose the

contents of your /var/lib/dpkg directory. Once that directory is gone, you can

no longer update or install software. These things happen even to the best of

us, so here’s a procedure to get your Debian system back where it was (or

close), without losing any of your data or having to reinstall all of Debian

from scratch.

OK, so you lost the /var/lib/dpkg directory. Heck, if you had /var on its own

partition, you might have lost everything under the /var directory. If that’s

the case, you’ll have a lot more work to do than restoring your Debian pack-

age database. Unfortunately, because every system differs, it’s up to you to

figure out what you need to restore directories other than those required by

Debian. At minimum, you’ll need to create the following directories to start

your recovery process. Log in as root, and run these commands:

# mkdir –p /var/cache/apt/archives

# mkdir –p /var/cache/debconf

# mkdir –p /var/log

# mkdir –p /var/lib/dpkg/info

# mkdir –p /var/lib/dpkg/parts

# mkdir –p /var/lib/dpkg/alternatives

# mkdir –p /var/lib/dpkg/methods

# mkdir ...