What happened? I can't even su ...

[Andrew Teal <A Teal hud ac uk>]

Bear with me, I seem to have created quite a few levels of error and need to
know whether they are connected ...

i386 running Enigma, successfully, originally for one application only. I
control it remotely.

Getting ambitious :-), I tried to install an application called vw
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/wvware) ./configure went fine but reminded
me that libwmf is also needed. ./configure for that was again ok but make
failed with a message about too many levels of symbolic links. Internet
research on that seemed to blame gcc 2.96 / RedHat 7.1, so I tried to update
that. [The actual failing file, libwmflite.so, is a symbolic link to itself
-- created by make ... ] **

Trying to update gcc, it is now clear, is not as straightforward as it seems
... after an abortive attempt, and taking advice, I tried to use up2date.

Running up2date gave a syntax error in line 1 of
/usr/share/pixmaps/userhelper-keys.xpm

Bizarrely, that appeared to be a comment line ... /* XPM */ ... and deleting
it indeed allowed up2date to run.

The next thing was that my settings (default?) required me to update my GPG
keyring to include the RH public key; doing that from the application just
said there was an error; using the command line version helpfully provided
(/usr/bin/gpg --import /usr/share/rhn/RPM-GPG-KEY) gave slightly more
detail:

gpg: lock not made: link() failed: No such file or directory
gpg: fatal: can't lock '/root/.gnupg/pubring.gpg'

There are no locks in operation on that file.

---------------------------------

** the vw developer calls this 'bizarre'  and suggested using cvs checkout
to get a newer version of libwmf, libwmf2. However ...

cvs [checkout aborted]: cannot rename .new.AUTHORS to AUTHORS: No such file
or directory

Again, and typically in my experience, it doesn't say *which* file it's
looking for -- .new.AUTHORS is present, contains the correct text, and can
easily be renamed manually -- but if that's done cvs just comments that
AUTHORS is "in the way", and chokes on the next file instead. Could get
tedious.

---------------------------------

btw, changing to root is not a solution -- so it's not just a permissions
problem (?).

So, on RHN I discovered a way around up2date and logged on for a
comprehensive update to 7.2 over the weekend. The report this morning is
that everything (103 operations) went successfully. I should be so lucky :-(

./configure and make on libwmf appear to behave in exactly the same way
(even after make distclean).

cvs doesn't even get as far as it did before (begins to get worried): 

cvs: error while loading shared libraries: libgssapi_krb5.so.2: cannot open
shared object file: No such file or directory

And then:

su: error while loading shared libraries: libpam.so.0: cannot open shared
object file: Error 40

Oh dear. I'm reluctant to reboot for fear of losing the original app (or
even not being able to restart). Do I just need reassurance?

Help !

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  Andrew Teal         Information Technologist              
  School of Human & Health Sciences
  HW1/05, University of Huddersfield, 
  Queensgate, Huddersfield, HD1 3DH
<a teal hud ac uk>       Tel: 01484 473674
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