Today, I ran an `emerge -uDN world`, and mysql kept failing on the ./configure step because it couldn’t properly execute `ps`.
For as long as I can remember, my gentoo box has been unable to run `ps`. Every time I did, I’d get a “No such file or directory” error regarding /lib64/libproc-3.2.6.so
Upon further investigation, I found that an `ls /lib64/libproc*` showed two files:
/lib64/libproc-3.2.7.so
/lib64/libproc.so
…so, `ps` was trying to access 3.2.6, and I had 3.2.7. Obviously something was out of whack–probably an environment variable. I tried creating a /lib64/libproc-3.2.6.so symlink back to the /lib64/libproc-3.2.7, but `ps` only failed with a different error.
So, naturally, I figured I would simply unmerge and re-emerge the package. An `emerge –search libproc` reveled only one package: dev-libs/libproccpuinfo. After unmerging and re-emerging this package a dozen times, I fell back to google. Turns out that the REAL package for the libproc.so file is sys-process/procps. When I got the…
!!! ‘sys-process/procps’ is part of your system profile.
!!! Unmerging it may be damaging to your system.>>> Waiting 10 seconds before starting…
…message, I was sure that I’d break my system, but I continued, finished the unmerge, re-emerged the package, crossed my fingers, and SUCCESS–I could run a `ps` again. The mysql package was making it to the `make` step, and all is well.
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Hi, I’m Michael Altfield. I write articles about opsec, privacy, and devops ➡
Holy wow, Gentoo keeps coming up with ways to be terrible. When you learn to value your free time FreeBSD has a very nice method of not breaking itself.
You can’t blame Gentoo for my ignorance. I probably deleted an important library somehow by accident. I don’t know how I get myself into these things, but I somehow always manage to do so…
The important moral of the story is that I was able to pull myself OUT of the situation. If I was using Windows, for example, I would have had to reinstall the whole OS.