[SOLVED] After pacman glibc update, cannot find command bash?

Question

A few days ago I ran into a problem after running pacman -Syu that ended up with an unbootable system.  I found this topic that ultimately solved the kernel panic-
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 1#p1127251
All that was needed was a symlink "/lib" to point to "/usr/lib"
My system now almost boots but luckily I can now get a to a shell (zsh).  The problem is that I can not run bash, and various other tools- including my desktop environment and pacman.
I have checked my $path, and have verified that I have the binary file "/usr/bin/bash" and a symlink in /bin/bash to point to that binary file, which does exist...
% ls -l /bin/bash
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 May 24 23:43 /bin/bash -> /usr/bin/bash
% ls -l /usr/bin/bash
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 738008 Mar 13 00:47 /usr/bin/bash
But when I try to start a bash shell or run a script
% bash
zsh: command not found: bash
% pacman
zsh: command not found: pacman
% /usr/bin/bash
zsh: no such file or directory /usr/bin/bash
% cat test.sh
#!/bin/bash
echo "Hello World"
% ./test.sh
zsh: ./test.sh: bad interpreter: /bin/bash: no such file or directory
I hope i was thorough enough in providing information about my system, but please let me know if there's anything else I left out that may be able to help.
Thanks so much!
[SOLVED]-  Ended up mounting my system from a live install cd, and copying over each bash binary in my system with the live media's binary.
Last edited by OrangeCrush (2013-05-25 06:38:43)

Answer 1

If it has only been a few months, that thread should have nothing to do with what you are experiencing.  That problem stemmed from when the filesystem was actually changed from having /lib as an actual directory to /lib as a symlink to /usr/lib.  Oh the problems that caused.  For me it went perfectly smooth... well I did have to search for and rid /lib of extraneous unowned files, but it was smooth after that.
You say though that you did not have a /lib symlink when you checked, and then you created it?  This is odd, as that is part of the filesystem package and therefore a tracked file.  Maybe you should start by reinstalling the filesystem package just to make sure that the necessary components of the filesystem are all in order before proceeeding.
BTW, you should really update more often than every "few months" as that is what using a rolling release is all about.  Also if you don't update very often still, never update the database (-Sy) without also updating the system (-Syu) as this will lead to partial upgrades, which can severly break your system.  So never do "pacman -Sy <package>" as that is the equivalent of doing just a "pacman -Sy" and then continuing on your merry way.  Big changes are in the air right now around these parts, so keeping your system up to date is probably going to be crucial in making subsequent updates as pain free as possible (we are heading towards the final /bin -> /usr/bin move!).