LinHES

Background:

libreadline 5.0 is currently in linhes. libreadline 6.0 is the current version in abs and many higher packages require libreadline 6.0.

HOWEVER:

Upgrading libreadline turns out to be a nightmare.

I ran into this when I upgraded procmail to abs and it required libreadline 6.0. I then built readline 6.0 from abs and got into this mess....

See:

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=76687
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=75975
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=74453

Basically, after upgrading to 6.0, it is not possible to execute most commands (including halt/shutdown/reboot).

It would be useful to upgrade readline in the linhes repositories so people don't keep running into it because it is messy.

To fix after upgrading readline to 6.0:

1. create symlinks in /lib for libreadline.so.5 and libhistory.so.5 that point to the .6 versions (this can be done after the problem has occurred).

2. shutdown will now work, so shut down the system Note: the symlinks are not enough... they are just enough to shutdown "gracefully".

3. Boot from CD.

4. Copy the original libreadline.so.5 and libhistory.so.5 (and what they point to) from the CD to /lib.

5. Reboot normally.

6. Upgrade all the packages that depend on libreadline.so.5 that for some reason pacman didn't detect. I'm not sure how to figure this out..... any help would be useful. Maybe if there is a way to do this before upgrading libreadline, this would be a lot easier.

8. Delete the libreadline.so.5 and libhistory.so.5