unbelievably stupid mistake - i broke /usr/lib need help

[Alastair McKinley]

>Alastair McKinley wrote:
>  
>
>Peter Skensved wrote:
>
>    
>
>  I would start by backing up /root, /boot, /etc and /var
>plus anything installed in /usr/local and /home . Next get a list of
>all installed RPMs ( rpm -qa | sort  or  rpm -a --qf "%{NAME}\n" | sort )
>      
>
>         and save them somewhere. With that information you can
>         probably reconstruct your laptop if everything fails ( this
>         assumes you always install binaries
>
>from RPM files and stuff from random tar files in /usr/local )
>
> Once you have done that run  rpm -Va  and save the output. This
>will give you a list of missing files. Try installing the missing
>ones with  rpm -Uv --force  . If that works then heck for .rpmnew files
>and try reconstructing any munged configuration files.
>
>      
>
>         I've successfully done the above with a really clobbered file
>         system on a laptop.
>
>                                                  peter
>----
>
>Peter Skensved                          Email : peter SNO Phy QueensU CA
>Dept. of Physics,
>Queen's University,
>Kingston, Ontario,
>Canada
>
>      
>
>Hi Peter,
>
>    
>
>     Thanks for your advice. I managed to install enough libraries
>     manually to get rpm up and running again. What will the rpm -Uv
>     --force command actually do?
>
Patrick Boutilier wrote:

> Reinstall the RPM (files as well) even though the RPM is already 
> installed according to the RPM database.


Can yum do something similar and go and get the packages from the repos?



Alastair